April Performance in Brief
There is a drastic divergence between our daily Trend portfolio and the weekly Trend portfolio. I don’t remember any month where a system made this much! The daily is higher by 13% this year while the weekly portfolio is higher by 76%, not including the 9% so far this week. It’s not just a sign that volatility is high, but that traders are jumping out and back in again within a few days. Holding on to the same trades seems to be the way to go.
That goes for our crude trade as well. Holding long is not for the weak-hearted, but so far, so good. The rest of futures are still flopping around, looking for a trend.
Stocks did well in April, well ahead of the Index markets, even with a lot of juggling around. Even with high gas prices, earnings are coming in strong for some markets. It’s only a matter of finding them.
Futures are still flat, with positions concentrated in the short rates and the yen. The only commodity is crude. Gold and silver no longer interest the portfolio.
In-Person Appearances
- Perry and Kevin Davey will give a 3-day trading course in late September, to be held in Chicago.
- Perry will be a key speaker at the IFTA conference in London in October.
Kaufman’sMost Popular Books (available on Amazon)
Trading Systems and Methods, 6th Edition. The complete guide to trading systems, with more than 250 programs and spreadsheets. The most important book for a system developer.
Kaufman Constructs Trading Systems. A step-by-step manual on how to develop, test, and trade an algorithmic system.
Learn To Trade. Written for both serious beginners and practiced traders, this book includes chart formations, trends, indicators, trading rules, risk, and portfolio management. You can find it in color on Amazon.
You can also find these books on our website, www.kaufmansignals.com.
Blogs and Recent Publications
Find Mr. Kaufman’s other recent publications and seminars at the end of this report. We post new interviews, seminars, and reference new articles by Mr. Kaufman each month.
Major Equity ETFs
This is why the Weekly Trend portfolio is doing well, while the Daily is barely creeping up! After a clear downturn, the market has put in one of the best months. Why? No one seems to know. Perhaps it is semiconductors and AI, even Apple which has good sales in China. But one would think that higher crude prices would dampen spending. Either the gains aer limited to a small set of markets, or we are just misreading this.
A Standing Note on Short Sales
Note that the “All Signals” reports show short sales in stocks and ETFs, even though short positions are not executed in the equity portfolios. Our work over the years shows that downturns in the stock market are most often short-lived and it is difficult to capture with a longer-term trend. The upwards bias also works against shorter-term systems unless using futures, which allows leverage. Our decision has been to take only long positions in equities and control the risk by exiting many of the portfolios when there is extreme volatility and/or an indication of a severe downturn.
PORTFOLIO METHODOLOGY IN BRIEF
Both equity and futures programs use the same basic portfolio technology. They all exploit the persistence of performance, that is, they seek those markets with good long-term and short-term returns on the specific system, rank them, then choose the best, subject to liquidity, an existing current signal, with limitations on how many can be chosen from each sector. If there are not enough stocks or futures markets that satisfy all the conditions, then the portfolio holds fewer assets. In general, these portfolios are high beta, showing higher returns and higher risk, but have had a history of consistently outperforming the broad market index in all traditional measures.
PERFORMANCE BY GROUP
NOTE that the charts show below represent performance “tracking,” that is, the oldest results since are simulated but the returns from 2013 are the systematic daily performance added day by day. Any changes to the strategies do not affect the past performance, unless noted. The system assumes 100% investment and stocks are executed on the open, futures on the close of the trading day following the signals. From time to time we make logic changes to the strategies and show how the new model performs.
Groups DE1 and WE1: Daily and Weekly Trend Program for Stocks, including Income Focus, DowHedge, Sector Rotation, and the New High-Risk Portfolio
The Trend program seeks long-term directional changes in markets and the portfolios choose stocks that have realized profitable performance over many years combined with good short-term returns. It will hold fewer stocks when they do not meet our condition and exit the entire portfolio when there is extreme risk or a significant downturn.
Equity Trend
Who would have know that the Weekly Program would surge? However, when returns are this high, so are the retracements. It’s a case of holding on to your hats!
Income Focus and Sector Rotation
Is it my imagination, or is there a slight turn up in the charts? While this program profits from lower yields, it has been going sideways for about four months while the Fed decides on the interest rate policy. Both daily and weekly programs were up more than 2% in April.
Weekly Sector Rotation
Fractional gains in the Sector Rotation program but still higher by more than 10%. Energy seems to be the biggest problem, first up then down.
DowHedge Programs
Both portfolios gained about 7% in April, with the Daily now higher by 13% and the Weekly by 10%. The Daily program looks particularly good given the uncertainty of the economy.
High-Risk Portfolios
High risk seems to be living up to its name. The 5-stock portfolios gained 21% in April, now up by 28% for the year. The larger portfolio gained only 7% and is higher by 16%. Both good, but the 5-stock portfolio seems to be concentrated on the more volatile markets.
Group DE2: Divergence Program for Stocks
The Divergence program looks for patterns where price and momentum diverge, then takes a position in anticipation of the pattern resolving itself in a predictable direction, often the way prices had moved before the period of uncertainty.
Good gains for the Divergence portfolios, with the 10-stock gaining 5.2% and the 30-stock up by 2.7%. Both are now about 9% for the year.
Group DE3: Timing Program for Stocks
The Timing program is a relative-value arbitrage, taking advantage of undervalued stocks relative to its index. It first finds the index that correlates best with a stock, then waits for an oversold indicator within an upwards trend. It exits when the stock price normalizes relative to the index, or the trend turns down. These portfolios are long-only because the upwards bias in stocks and that they are most often used in retirement accounts.
Although both portfolios posted a gain of 3%, this is the only program that still has a loss for the year. I’ve always thought this strategy was robust, but it does require a trend to profit. Prices jumping around doesn’t seem to help.
Futures Programs
Groups DF1: Daily Trend Programs for Futures
Futures allow both high leverage and true diversification. The larger portfolios, such as $1million, are diversified into both commodities and world index and interest rate markets, in addition to foreign exchange. Its performance is not expected to track the U.S. stock market and is a hedge in every sense because it is uncorrelated. As the portfolio becomes more diversified its returns are more stable.
The leverage available in futures markets allows us to manage the risk in the portfolio, something not possible to the same degree with stocks. This portfolio targets 14% volatility. Investors interested in lower leverage can simply scale down all positions equally in proportion to their volatility preference. Note that these portfolios do not trade Asian futures, which we believe are more difficult for U.S. investors to execute. The “US 250K” portfolio trades only U.S. futures.
Mixed results in the futures portfolios and slight losses for the year. Yes, you would think that there was money to be made in crude oil, but the chart that follows shows the last month. Not a consistent trend.
Meanwhile, the futures portfolio are quiet.
Group DF2: Divergence Portfolio for Futures
An unusual month for the Divergence program, with all portfolios gaining 3% to 4% and the 2026 results are both positive and negative.
Blogs and Recent Publications
Perry’s books are all available on Amazon or through our website, www.kaufmansignals.com.
In person appearances:
- Perry will be giving a special 3-day learning seminar with Kevin Davey in Chicago in September.
- He will also be a key speaker at the IFTA conference in London in October.
April 2026
A new article, “The Crack Spread” in Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities, for those interested in trading crude and its products.
February 2026 / March 2026
An interview with Tim Slater, one of the movers in technical analysis, written by Barbara Diamond. We don’t give enough credit to those that formed the industry.
December 2025 / January 2026
The January issue of Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities has Perry’s latest article, “Smoothing the Data.” He looks at a wide variety of smoothing techniques and finds that the moving average is not the best!
October 2025
An article in Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities (the November issue) on “Low-Priced Stocks: A Golden Opportunity or an Unreasonable Risk.” You can take a guess or read the article!
As mentioned in the Close-Up, this was a follow-up on the article published in Seeking Alpha on October 25th, “How To Hedge the U.S. Dollar: Gold, Bitcoin, or Whatever?” This version included some portfolio allocations, which should help.
September 2025
No articles in September, although Perry has committed to being the Keynote Speaker at the Society of Technical Analysts (STA) when it hosts the IFTA conference in October 2026 (not this year!)
August 2025
The September issue of Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities has Perry’s article “Using the Elusive Volume Confirmation.” While volume has been an important component of price movement, Perry takes a look at how useful it has been.
July 2025
This month (the August issue) there is an article on “Explaining FX Carry (In Detail).” The Carry program has had years of profits followed by years of losses, yet it is a very important part of institutional trading. This article shows how it is actually done.
Perry has been asked to be the Keynote speaker at the IFTA Conference in London in 2026 (not this year!). Of course he will accept. Plan to be there!
June 2025
Yes, another article! “There is Money To Be Made On The Weekends – But You Need to Know The Market,” appeared in the June issue of Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities.
Perry gave a Webinar to “Trading Heads” in Mumbai, India on June 5 at 9:30 AM New York time. Discussed “Not the Usual Diversification.” With any luck, it was taped.
May 2025
You’ll find Perry’s article “Trading the Channel” more interesting than usual. Published in the May issue of Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities, it looks at various ways of construction a channel, and one very profitable one.
Perry also addressed a Spanish class where they are building algorithmic strategies. Called ROBOTRADER, it in ETSIT-UPM (Escuela Técnica Superior Ingenieros Telecomunicación- Universidad Politécnica Madrid). The presentation is about Diversfication (in English) and available on youtube.
Older Items of Interest
Perry did a studio interview with Jeff Baccaccio (“Rfactory”) in London in March 2025. It is a fine production and a good interview. He has put it on youtube. I hope you enjoy it.
YouTube: https://youtu.be/jmR359jHYBQ?si=IHQ5bVLijGFM19qF
Perry was interviewed on June 27, 2024 by Simon Mansell and Richard Brennan at QuantiveAlpha (Queensland, Australia), a website heavy into technical trading. It appears on their website.
On April 18th, 2023, Perry gave a webinar to the Society of Technical Analysts (London) on how to develop and test a successful trading system. Check their website for more details, https://www.technicalanalysts.com..
Perry’s webinar on risk, given to the U.K. Society of Technical Analysts, can be seen using the following link: https://vimeo.com/708691362/04c8fb70ea
For older articles please scan the websites for Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities, Modern Trader, Seeking Alpha, ProActive Advisor Magazine, and Forbes. You will also find recorded presentations given by Mr. Kaufman at BetterSystemTrader.com, TalkingTrading.com, FXCM.com, systemtrade.pl, the website for Alex Gerchik, Michael Covel’s website, TrendFollowing.com, and Talking Trading.com.
You can address any questions to perry@kaufmansignalsdaily.com.
© April 2026, Etna Publishing, LLC. All Rights Reserved.