The Last Few Weeks Have Been Brutal

The last few weeks have been absolutely brutal.

Rate cut, no rate cut…maybe a rate cut? Everyone watching their portfolios swing wildly while trying to figure out if this is the start of something worse or just noise.

And that’s the problem with discretionary trading during times like these. You’re making decisions every single day based on incomplete information, headlines that contradict each other, and your own emotional state after watching your account drop 3% overnight.

Should you sell? Should you buy the dip? Is this the crash everyone’s been calling for? Or is this just another shakeout before we rip higher?

You go to bed second-guessing every decision. You wake up checking futures. You spend your day refreshing your portfolio, reading X (Twitter), trying to find some signal in all the chaos.

And the worst part is you know you’re probably making it harder on yourself. But you don’t know what else to do.

This is exactly why I built Trendlock.

Not to predict the future. Not to catch every move. But to remove you from having to make those decisions in the middle of the chaos.

The system doesn’t care about tariffs. It doesn’t read Trump’s posts. It doesn’t watch CNBC. It just follows the data. When conditions are strong, it’s in leveraged ETFs capturing momentum. When conditions deteriorate, it rotates to defense.

You’re not sitting there every day wondering if today’s the day you should get out. The system handles that. You get one email per week with any changes. You execute over the weekend. And you carry on with your life.

Here’s what the system actually does.

Over the past 10 years, Trendlock has delivered 17.4% annualized returns with a max drawdown of 24.8%. Compare that to buy and hold SPY at 13% returns with a 33% drawdown.

You’re getting better returns with less pain.

But more importantly, look at what happens during the chaos.

During COVID in 2020, when SPY was down 10%, Trendlock was down 5%.

During the 2022 bear market, when SPY dropped 18.6%, Trendlock limited damage to 10.6%.

In the 2008 simulation, when SPY collapsed 36%, Trendlock was down about 5% because it rotated to cash and sat there while everyone else got destroyed.

That’s the whole point. You don’t have to predict the crash. You just have to not be in it when it happens.

Now let me be clear about something.

This system will not win every trade. There will be stretches where you’re underwater for months.

It sucks!

The system recovered. It always has. But can you stick with it through that?

That’s the only question that matters.

Because here’s the reality. About 71% of years are positive. That means roughly 3 losing years per decade. You need to budget for that mentally before you start.

And those losing years are nowhere near as bad as white knuckling it through long only SPY.

But when you look at the alternative, trying to navigate this on your own, making decisions every day based on fear and headlines and Twitter, the systematic approach starts to make a lot more sense.

The edge isn’t in the signals. The edge is in your ability to follow them.

The system rotates between offensive and defensive positioning based on market conditions. You can see it in real time. When it moves to cash, you know something has changed. When it loads back into leveraged ETFs, you know the coast is clear (offensive or defensive).

You’re not guessing. You’re following a process that’s been validated across multiple market cycles, crisis periods, and regime changes.

We’ll be rolling this out to a limited number of traders, first come first serve. Keep an eye out for the email, we’ll be launching later this week.

This system works. Not because it’s magic. But because it removes you from the hardest part of trading, which is managing your own psychology while the market is trying to shake you out.

You’ve been asking for this for at least six years. I finally listened.

More details coming soon on how to get access.

Related Posts

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Brandon Beylo

Value Investor

Brandon has been a professional investor focusing on value for over 13 years, spending his time in small to micro-cap companies, spin-offs, SPACs, and deep value liquidation situations. Over time, he’s developed a deeper understanding for what deep-value investing actually means, and refined his philosophy to include any business trading at a wild discount to what he thinks its worth in 3-5 years.

Brandon has a tenacious passion for investing, broad-based learning, and business. He previously worked for several leading investment firms before joining the team at Macro Ops. He lives by the famous Munger mantra of trying to get a little smarter each day.

AK

Investing & Personal Finance

AK is the founder of Macro Ops and the host of Fallible.

He started out in corporate economics for a Fortune 50 company before moving to a long/short equity investment firm.

With Macro Ops focused primarily on institutional clients, AK moved to servicing new investors just starting their journey. He takes the professional research and education produced at Macro Ops and breaks it down for beginners. The goal is to help clients find the best solution for their investing needs through effective education.

Tyler Kling

Volatility & Options Trader

Former trade desk manager at $100+ million family office where he oversaw multiple traders and helped develop cutting edge quantitative strategies in the derivatives market.

He worked as a consultant to the family office’s in-house fund of funds in the areas of portfolio manager evaluation and capital allocation.

Certified in Quantitative Finance from the Fitch Learning Center in London, England where he studied under famous quants such as Paul Wilmott.

Alex Barrow

Macro Trader

Founder and head macro trader at Macro Ops. Alex joined the US Marine Corps on his 18th birthday just one month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He subsequently spent a decade in the military. Serving in various capacities from scout sniper to interrogator and counterintelligence specialist. Following his military service, he worked as a contract intelligence professional for a number of US agencies (from the DIA to FBI) with a focus on counterintelligence and terrorist financing. He also spent time consulting for a tech company that specialized in building analytic software for finance and intelligence analysis.

After leaving the field of intelligence he went to work at a global macro hedge fund. He’s been professionally involved in markets since 2005, has consulted with a number of the leading names in the hedge fund space, and now manages his own family office while running Macro Ops. He’s published over 300 white papers on complex financial and macroeconomic topics, writes regularly about investment/market trends, and frequently speaks at conferences on trading and investing.

Macro Ops is a market research firm geared toward professional and experienced retail traders and investors. Macro Ops’ research has been featured in Forbes, Marketwatch, Business Insider, and Real Vision as well as a number of other leading publications.

You can find out more about Alex on his LinkedIn account here and also find him on Twitter where he frequently shares his market research.