AND WE’RE BACK

Its been one long month, but we’re finally back. The best part is, we’re back with news and updates! Let’s not waste time, here’s the quick list of this weeks news.

1. Composer updates

2. Community Contests

3. New user information

4. Community Showcase additions

1. Composer Updates

Composer has upped their deposit bonus for new accounts! If you haven’t signed up yet and have been waiting for a deal of some kind, now may be a good time to jump on it.

They’re offering an uncapped bonus of .5% on deposits of 10,000 or more, respectably high in the fintech and wealth management spaces. It beats the shit out of offers like the IPhone 15 Pro Max for $200k that WealthSimple is offering, that’s for sure.

2. Community Contest!

This is a fun one I’m super hyped about (partially because I’m one of the judges.) Community Member @Rogan.McGillis had the genius idea for a quick, simple, fun little contests to come up with some unique strategies. He offered up $100 to the Venmo account of the eventual winner, and @monkeywicked offered up .003BTC deposited to the account of the winner. Grand prize for the winner is the sum total of $100 via Venmo (that is your one option, no fighting please) and .003BTC (come with an address handy!)

Big thanks to both of them for their incredibly generous offer!

Quick rundown of the rules;

1. No Combos of existing logic or strategies, new and original indicators and logic only.

   2 Caveats. One, we aren’t going to penalize you for using something generic like a “Moving average of SPY vs moving average of SPY” or SPY vs BND indicator, but you certainly won’t be getting any bonus points for originality.

   Two, if you’ve previously posted it to the community, its still eligible for the contest. Again though, you won’t lose any points, but no originality bonus either. All you have to do is post it in the thread linked above!

2. We need a minimum of 10 strategies entered in order to make this even close to fair. Based off discussion, we really shouldn’t have any issues hitting this though.

@JasonKoz and I are going to be judging the event. The only scoring criteria is how unique your signals are, and how likely it is it’ll continue to work into the future. In other words, you’re being judged entirely on our opinion! Hopefully you’re ready to be told you’re overfitting and gambling if you don’t come correct.

I’m going to be hosting an event on Discord when the contest ends, December 23rd at 7PM EST, 4PM Pacific. Hopefully I’ll see you and your entry there!

3. New User Information

This may not be all that interesting to you as a long time reader, but if you know anyone in real life you think would enjoy Composer or see anyone in the server in need of a crash course, I’ve put together a collection of strategies as well as super simple educational materials. We’re talking sub-101 level information here.

Three unique paths, lots of information, and more helpful links attached to help get you or your friends started! I’m actually very proud of the work that went in to this, but I’m even more proud of the next one.

A collection of strategies and tools, specifically curated to showcase the basics of algorithmic investment, strategy design, and portfolio management. All completely free.

4. Community Showcase Additions

We’ve got another submission to the Showcase! With an impressive 7 months of live data behind it, it absolutely crushed SPY over the timeframe we’re looking at.

A mashup of “TQQQ or Not” and “Safety Town”, I have’t gotten all the way through parsing the logic out (it’s way over my personal preferences for symphony length) but the data speaks volumes, so it definitely warrants a further time commitment for investigation.

With SPY being more or less flat at the end of the timeframe and the strategy being up 20%, it steadily kept pace, marching up and to the right regardless of market conditions. Super impressive, and I’ll definitely be digging further in to this strategy in the coming days.

Thank you to @kms360 and @cashen2.0 for their contributions to this in the form of data and actually building this great looking strategy!

As a bit of a bonus, lets talk Wash Sales.

The end of the year is coming up quickly, and that means its time for everyone to start considering taxes. For the overwhelming majority of the community, that means grappling with the implications of wash sales. As a quick reminder of what a wash sale is, check out the Investopedia article on the topic.

The TLDR; of the entire topic is that there is a 99% chance your account has wash sales and it’s probably going to absolutely fuck you over. The community consensus on a solution, since none of us are tax professionals, is to just stop our symphonies from trading for 31 days to let the wash sales “fall off.” Some are making special “wash sale” symphonies that don’t share any overlap in regards to tickers, that’ll still allow people to trade while the wash sales wash off their trade history.

Check out the Tax Discussion thread in the Discord if you haven’t. There is a huge discussion ongoing on the topic, and lots of information has been posted on the topic!

That sums it up for this week. Stay safe out there in the markets, and may your wash sale portfolio stay green with the market!

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