12th of June marks the 1st anniversary of our running product ARION. We have big reasons to celebrate as the strategy managed to finish its first year of life fully complying with the main defined targets, which are to deliver an average monthly return of 2% and maintain an all time historical drawdown less that 30%.
After on year ARION is delivering an average return (as measured at the MASTER account) of more than 3% and the historical drawdown stands now at less than 22%. This maximum drawdown point happened as we came into the new year and financial markets had a near two month turmoil period. Well into February, 2016 was classified by most of the market participants as the worst beginning of the year ever for financial markets.
We find noteworthy that the larger drawdown verified in January and February of 2016, occured as a result of smaller losses in a sequence of several unprofitable trades and not as a result of bigger losses concentrated in few trades. This shows that the strategy reacted badly to the market conditions of the beginning of the ear, but shows also that there was no reckless trading involved.
The way the markets behaved in that period clearly affected the performance of our portfolio, but the good news is that, as ARION approaches 1 year of life, the recovery up to the end of 2015 values is almost achieved.
We continue to monitor our portfolio and have used the information about the portfolio behavior during the fist two months of 2016, to fine tune our strategies and avoid new big drawdown period as much as possible and expect a 2nd year with renewed profits and reduced risk.