Effects of Execution Delay on SACEVS

How does execution delay affect the performance of the Best Value and Weighted versions of the “Simple Asset Class ETF Value Strategy” (SACEVS)? These strategies each month allocate funds to the following asset class exchange-traded funds (ETF) according to valuations of term, credit and equity risk premiums, or to cash if no premiums are undervalued:

3-month Treasury bills (Cash)
iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond (TLT)
iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond (LQD)
SPDR S&P 500 (SPY)

To investigate, we compare 22 variations of each strategy with execution days ranging from end-of-month (EOM) per the baseline strategy to 21 trading days after EOM (EOM+21). For example, an EOM+5 variation computes allocations based on EOM but delays execution until the close five trading days after EOM. We include a benchmark that each month allocates 60% to SPY and 40% to TLT (60-40) to see whether variations are unique to SACEVS. We focus on gross compound annual growth rate (CAGR), maximum drawdown (MaxDD) and annual Sharpe ratio as key performance statistics. Using daily dividend-adjusted closes for the above ETFs from the end of July 2002 through January 2020, we find that:

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