Profit booking on the minds of SSYS investors as it ranks better than it's peers but, has not managed to breakout

STRATASYS LTD. (Foreign) delivered stellar performance on Wednesday. It gained +1.97% to close at 20.7. On a day when the overall market breadth was 35%, it closed higher than 9% of the market. In comparison, the benchmark SP500 index closed today at +0.54%.

[Themes containing SSYS]

SSYS is currently in a down trend. Over the last three months trading short signals has not been a profitable strategy for SSYS's investors in general. However, this strategy had significantly lower risk when compared to Buy-and-Hold investing (which returned -10.97%). It is therefore better to tread with caution in the current downtrend by limiting your allocation to SSYS.

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Monthly Performance

Alpha (outperformance)

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Volatility

Return distribution

SSYS has been underperforming the SP500 index in recent time, after having outperformed till 14 Apr, 2016. Over the last 2 years 11 months and 8 days, SSYS underperformed the SP500 index on 48% days. Which indicates that on days SSYS underperforms the SP500 index, it's performance is marginally worse than on the days it outperforms the SP500 index.

SSYS returned losses on 54% days in the last three months. During this time, it delivered on average -0.13% per day. It delivered it's best daily return of +19.88%, during this period, on Thursday, 1 Nov, 2018. There was initially a bearish trend during this period which started on 4 Oct, 2018 and went on till 11 Oct, 2018. The trend delivered -12.31% losses to investors. This was followed by a bullish trend that started on 12 Oct, 2018 and ended on 17 Oct, 2018. This bullish trend delivered +5.83% to investors.

SSYS had 5 profitable and 7 loss making months over the last year. During the last year, SSYS underperformed SP500 index on monthly return basis. SSYS significantly outperformed SP500 index in Aug 2018, when it returned +28.48% compared to +4.75% returned by SP500 index during it's best month in the last one year - Jan 2018. SSYS and SP500 index, both had periods of 2 consecutive losing months.

But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating.
-- Robert McChesney

SSYS is becoming less volatile overall. In comparison, the SP500 index is seeing a rise in volatility. During the last three months, there was a significant surge in SSYS's volatility from 28 Sep, 2018 to 1 Nov, 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 SSYS has significant positive skewness in it's return distribution. This indicates that investors can expect SSYS to recover from drawdowns quickly. Which makes SSYS a good candidate for investing on short-term bullish trends or even counter-trends hoping for a pull-back.

Investors trading in SSYS derivatives at this moment can consider 'Long Straddle' options strategy to receive better risk-adjusted returns.

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

On a general note (since you are interested in SSYS), three instruments that have performed similar to SSYS are TERP, PKOH and MXL. They must all be evaluated as alternative investment options and for diversification.