GDR Model Review: March and Q1 2025
One of the GDR Model's top 3 performance months so far
The GDR Model returned 9.57% vs the S&P 500’s Total Return of -5.63%, beating the index by 1,520 basis points in March.
For Q1 2025, the GDR Model returned 12.54% vs the S&P 500’s Total Return of -4.27% beating the index by 1,681 basis points.
The GDR Model’s performance profile is very much within the expectation so far this year. Specifically, I’d expect the distribution of returns to follow the Pareto Principle: roughly 80% of the overall profitability is explained by the performance over just approximately 20% of the time.
Comparing the returns for January and February, March’s far outpace them and that’s the month that’s currently accounting for most of the outperformance for 2025 so far.
The GDR Model started out the month short through the close of 10 March. This was fortunate in that it was very close to the bottom for the month.
From there, the GDR Model adopted tactical positioning, which due to current valuations, means being modestly long the market. Because sell-offs tend to be more fickle and short-covering rallies can often lift prices much higher, the model tends to be pickier when taking short positions.
Overall the GDR Model continues to work as intended: it caught the meat of the down trend for the month, and once that was done shifted to tactical positioning.
