Portfolio rebalancing is a strategy that has been used by investors for decades. First, an investor must determine how much of their portfolio they want to allocate to each asset. In the case of cryptocurrencies, each asset would be a coin. These allocations are simply the percent of each coin that should be represented in the total value of the combined portfolio. When it is time to rebalance the portfolio, the coins are traded such that the value held in each asset is once again equal to the percentages that were originally specified.
Let’s look at an example. Say you have a portfolio where you have 4 different cryptocurrencies: BTC, ETH, LTC, and XMR. You have determined that you would like each of these four cryptocurrencies to have an equal 25% stake in your portfolio. This means, at the end of a rebalance, your portfolio would consist of 25% in each of these 4 assets. Since coins don’t generally cost the same per coin, the value should be calculated in fiat or a base currency, so the different coins won’t be equal in quantity, but in value. So, if you had $100 total between these four assets, you would have $25 in each after a rebalance took place.
This image shows a visual representation of what happens when a portfolio with equal weights is rebalanced.
Advantages of Rebalancing
With the trend of crypto investors “hodling” investments, rebalancing provides an opportunity to potentially boost these held earnings by taking advantage of rapid fluctuations in price. When a coin experiences strong gains, the rebalance will distribute those gains among the other assets. This means even if the value of the coin returns to the original price before the rise, rebalancing allows the portfolio to net a positive gain over this period.
In order to demonstrate the potential advantage over holding coins, we performed a detailed analysis with real market data over the last 1-year period. Based on our findings, rebalancing beats HODL by a median of 64%. After taxes, this represents 92% of all possible cryptocurrency portfolios. Without any work involved in managing the coins, performing trades, or changing allocations, rebalancing took holding to an entirely new level. You can see the rest of the analysis here:
Rebalance vs. HODL: A Technical Analysis_The intention of this study is to paint a fair picture of how rebalancing as a strategy stacks up to HODLing. In order…_hackernoon.com
You can see how well other portfolios would have performed over the last year by using our simple backtest tool.
Common Rebalancing Strategies
There are numerous rebalancing strategies, but we will only discuss two of the most common strategies.
Periodic
Simple illustration depicting how periodic rebalancing takes place at specific times. After 24 hours, the allocations are not equal, so a rebalance will make them equal once again.
The simplest of these strategies is periodic rebalancing, which uses a fixed amount of time between each rebalance. This amount of time is usually shorter for cryptocurrencies than for other asset classes, due to rapid price fluctuations. For example, it would be reasonable to select a portfolio rebalance time of 1 day. This would mean that at the same time every day, your portfolio would be rebalanced.
Threshold
This demonstrates a threshold rebalance when a portfolio reaches a 10% deviation. Notice the difference between the green and the blue allocation is 10%. This gap between the two allocations triggers a rebalance.
Rebalancing based on allocation tolerance bands examines the drift of the allocations relative to each other. By relating them to each other, the variance between each coin is tracked over time. So as the percent allocation of individual coins drift apart, a rebalance takes place when the difference between any two coins crosses a threshold. For example, with a band that is +-5%, if one coin represents 5% more or less of the entire portfolio than it should, the portfolio is rebalanced. Imagine the situation previously discussed where we had 4 different coins that each held 25% of the portfolio value. In this method, a rebalance would happen as soon as one of those assets consumes less than 20% or more than 30% of the portfolio value. However, this also means that if all of the coins in the portfolio are increasing or decreasing in value together, without changing their percent representation in the total portfolio, then no rebalance takes place.
Rebalancing in Shrimpy
In the Shrimpy application, we use the periodic rebalancing strategy to help new investors get into cryptocurrency investing without having to worry about complex trading strategies. Predicting the daily movements of the crypto market is difficult, so rebalancing provides a way to eliminate the need for such predictions. This means you can define allocations for each of the currencies you would like to invest in as well as the frequency that this portfolio will be rebalanced. If you need some help on getting started with creating a portfolio, be sure to check out our previous post which details our tips for choosing strong investments. Try Shrimpy now for free!
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Leave a comment to let us know your experiences with rebalancing!
The Shrimpy Team