JUNE Performance in Brief
It may not look like much, but holding your own in a very volatile and unpredictable market is a good sign. It makes it easier to move forward when prices settle down. Given the Iraq continuing problems, higher consumer prices, a switch from AI into health (is that possible?), a short rally in SpaceX, and lots more, prices have flopped around trying to decide the next move.
When I look at the weekly trend performance, it reminds me how important it is to understand risk. New traders are frightened about losses, experienced traders have seen too many drawdowns and recoveries, so it takes a lot to get concerned. The weekly trend program had a 20% to 25% drawdown before recovering. Unfortunately, that seems to be normal in system trading. Without that risk, there is no reward.
Just a note on the Weekly Trend: We’ve corrected the performance and recalculated returns from the beginning of 2026. The results are still remarkable.
In-Person Appearances
Perry is planning a 3-day seminar with Kevin Davey on September 24-26th in Chicago. They will discuss their best strategies. Anyone interested in further information can contact Perry at kaufmansignalsdaily@gmail.com. More to come.
- A key speaker at the 40th anniversary of the Italian Society of Technical Analysis in Brescia on September 19th.
- A 3-day seminar with Kevin Davey on September 24-26th in Chicago. We’ll discuss our best strategies. Anyone interested in further information can contact me at kaufmansignalsdaily@gmail.com. More to come.
- A key speaker at the IFTA conference, October 9-10 in London
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
The chart appears to be going up, but the S&P and Nasdaq were essentially flat in June. The DOW and small caps had gain of about 3%. However, both the SPY and QQQ are nicely ahead for the first half of the year, despite the economy. It seems that only a small part of the S&P are driving the gains, but that has happened before. I don’t expect anyone to predict what will happen in the second part of the year.
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
We’ve fixed the “compounding” problem, which turned out not be compounding. With a complicated program, it often takes strange numbers to point out problems. Even with that, the Weekly program is doing exceptionally well. I can verify that because I trade it. Up 5% is month but 81% for the year.
The Daily Trend program is just hanging in there, down a bit over 1% in June but higher by 5.8% for the year. We have another half your to build on that and an election that tends to drive the market higher, regardless of who wins.
Income Focus and Sector Rotation
Not much happening here. The daily Income Focus is off a fraction and the weekly gaining. This seems similar to the daily and weekly trend program, with the weekly more stable.
Weekly Sector Rotation
Creeping higher! This program seems to be negatively correlated to the tech stocks. Whenever tech declines, Sector Rotation gains. This month it was higher by 2% and is now up by 10% for the year.
DowHedge Programs
A shift in the daily and weekly programs for the DowHedge. The daily program was up by 6% and is now higher by26% for the year. The weekly program is lagging and is now out of the market based on the volatility hedge. Still, it is higher by 17% for the year.
High-Risk Portfolios
Another case of extreme performance, if only you can strap yourself to your seat! The 5-stock portfolio gained 39% in June and is now up 90% for the year. The larger 10-stock portfolio is higher by 17% and up 51% for the year. Yes, it’s risky.
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.
Continuing higher, this program looks for pauses in the trend, then takes a position in favor of the trend continuing. That seems to be the case right now. The 10-stock program was up by more than 7% in June and nearly 26% for the year. The 30-stock program lags as usual, up by more than 3% in June and 17% 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.
A little higher in the 10-stock portfolio and a bit lower in the 20-stock portfolio. Both of these are slightly down for the year, even though the picture below seems to be pointing up. I guess you can’t have every strategy doing well at the same time!
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.
Going nowhere! Flopping around in most markets makes it difficult for a trend program to gain ground. Mixed results in June but most programs off about 4% for the year. Hopefully, the U.S. election will add some direction.
Group DF2: Divergence Portfolio for Futures
We never give up! As with the Trend program, nothing much is happening here. Portfolios were mixed in June and somewhat mixed for the year. We’re still watching this.
Blogs and Recent Publications
Perry’s books are all available on Amazon or through our website, www.kaufmansignals.com.
In person appearances:
- A key speaker at the 40th anniversary of the Italian Society of Technical Analysis in Brescia on September 19th.
- A 3-day seminar with Kevin Davey on September 24-26th in Chicago. We’ll discuss our best strategies. Anyone interested in further information can contact me at kaufmansignalsdaily@gmail.com. More to come.
- A key speaker at the IFTA conference, October 9-10 in London
June 2026
Given the rallies in Silver and Crude, Perry published “Exiting the Trade: How To Avoid Being The Greater Fool.” Sometimes exiting sooner is the best choice. Read the article in the July issue of Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities
May 2026
Perry’s article “What We Can Learn From Drawdowns” was published in Spain,
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!
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.
© June 2026, Etna Publishing, LLC. All Rights Reserved.