MTRX investors looking to preserve capital

MATRIX SERVICE CO was among the worst performers on Tuesday. It returned -1.9% to close at 18.57. On a day when the overall market breadth was 35%, it closed higher than 18% of the market. In comparison, the benchmark SP500 index closed today at -0.0004%.

[Themes containing MTRX]

Buy-and-Hold investors in MTRX experienced a maximum drawdown of -27.88% over the last three months. It returned -25.27% during this strong down trending period. There were both Long and Short signals during this period, where the short signals were significantly more profitable than the long signals. The net profit from Short signals was +17.54%.

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MTRX has been underperforming the SP500 index in recent time, after having outperformed till 4 Jan, 2017. Over the last 2 years 11 months and 7 days, MTRX underperformed the SP500 index on 50% days. Which indicates that on days MTRX underperforms the SP500 index, it's performance is marginally worse than on the days it outperforms the SP500 index.

During the last three months MTRX was mostly loss making and delivered on average -0.43% per day. It's best return during this period (of +4.58%) was on Thursday, 8 Nov, 2018. While it's worst loss in the same period (of -7.09%) was on Friday, 9 Nov, 2018. There was initially a bearish trend during this period which started on 21 Sep, 2018 and went on till 27 Sep, 2018. The trend delivered -4.04% losses to investors. This was followed by a bullish trend that started on 1 Nov, 2018 and ended on 8 Nov, 2018. This bullish trend delivered +13.79% to investors.

On monthly basis, MTRX delivered profits and losses in equal number of months. MTRX delivered profits less regularly than SP500 index. MTRX significantly outperformed SP500 index in May 2018, when it returned +25.97% compared to +4.75% returned by SP500 index during it's best month in the last one year - Jan 2018. MTRX had a shorter streak of profitable months than SP500 index. It only went up in 3 straight months during the last year. It is interesting to note that both MTRX and SP500 index significantly outperform during months when quarterly/annual results are announced.

The challenge is not to pick the best investment. The challenge is to pick the right investment.
-- Don Connelly

MTRX is becoming more volatile overall. In comparison, the SP500 index is seeing a rise in volatility. During the last three months, there was a significant fall in MTRX's volatility from 13 Sep, 2018 to 27 Sep, 2018. While there was a significant surge in the SP500 index's volatility from 13 Sep, 2018 to 29 Oct, 2018.

Advanced/professional short-term investors should note that MTRX has significant positive skewness in it's return distribution. This indicates that investors can expect MTRX to recover from drawdowns quickly. Which makes MTRX a good candidate for investing on short-term bullish trends or even counter-trends hoping for a pull-back.

SP500 index has more chance of extreme outcomes than MTRX. Therefore, SP500 must receive a lower allocation than MTRX in your portfolio. SP500 index usually has shorter drawdown period than MTRX.

Based on your interest in MTRX you may find it interesting to know that V and AMZN are both large caps that have shown remarkable performance and deserve to be on every investors' watchlist.