Excellent article on traditional stock market myths in the Wall Street Journal. How financial advisors can get away with selling diversification through stocks and bonds alone almost borders on a breach of their fiduciary responsibility. In my upcoming book, High Performance Managed Futures we expose several common myths: “Diversification” with stocks and bonds alone is [...]
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
A recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal discussed why the SEC missed the Madoff scandal. The article raises strong points, but misses the most important point of all: how the issue could have been avoided in the first place if managed futures investor protections were in place. Below are my comments. Mr. Sauer [...]
Thursday, July 22, 2010
A presentation by the CME that clearly and concisely explains the fundamentals of managed futures. To view all the presentations from the CME’s Managed Futures Resource Center click below: The Growth of Managed Futures The Benefits of Managed Futures Potential To Lower Overall Risk Opportunity to Enhance Overall Portfolio Returns Broad Diversification Opportunities Opportunity to [...]
Thursday, July 22, 2010
The primary reason for this is the ease with which traditional financial advisors can access managed futures through mutual funds. Right now it takes a significant amount of time and effort for financial advisors to properly diversify their client’s portfolios utilizing managed futures.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Named one of the top CTAs in 2009 by Futures Magazine, Financial Commodity Investments recently experienced a negative period, down close to 6% over a two week period in the benchmark account we observe. The question is: should now be a good time to invest in the diversified short volatility program? Click here to view [...]
Friday, July 16, 2010
It is going to be interesting to see who among the top business journalists first recognizes the unique managed futures story. This article by respected journalist Stan Luxenburg discusses managed futures hedge funds and provides a limited look into what is a dynamic industry. I am a big fan of providing investors easy access to diversification. [...]
Thursday, July 15, 2010
The CFTC and its regulatory oversight structure (with the NFA) deserves national attention, something for the equity world to follow. For example, the bedrocks of “Bernie Madoff-like” fraud prevention — account segregation, counter party surveillance and general transparency – warrant a national spotlight in how they have successfully thwarted fraud in managed futures, the primary investment opportunity to spawn from the futures and options markets. Intelligent regulation has generally provided the asset class legitimacy through performance auditing and requiring adherence to strict business standards. No investment is perfect. But these bedrock fraud prevention methods…
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
It is pretty amazing that a governmental agency is seeking to track individual’s trading on the regulated exchanges. Many within the industry may howl with disgust at the notion of government tracking their “secret” trades, particularly if the trading tracked was in the unquestioned equity markets. Then a general outrage in the financial services industry would likely ensue. However, because this is the often ignored commodity industry the equity world will likely yawn, dismissing…
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
A recent article mentioned the stock of managed futures trend following firm Man AHL was downgraded due to consistently poor performance. In my opinion, this is more a comment on a strategy being beaten down, trend following, and should not entirely be a comment on the CTA, which points to an interesting insight into managed [...]
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Entertaining article in the Wall Street Journal about hand signals used by traders in the pits. It’s a vanishing part of our culture… Click here to link to the WSJ web site (required membership). CONTENT DISCLOSUREThis web site and related communication substantially represent the opinions of the author and are not reflective of the opinions of any [...]
Saturday, July 10, 2010
“In regards to receiving interest income, that is all dependent on how the account structure is set up. A direct account, for instance, can be set up to provide interest income as well as benefit from the managed futures performance. There are several account structures, each with various risk and reward trade-offs.”
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
A classic trend trader, CTA Karsten Schroeder does an excellent job of breaking down the market environment for trend traders in 2008 and 2009. While he doesn’t discuss other strategies, such as short volatility and spread trading strategies as they relate to market environment, his analysis of the four primary trades that drove trend trading success in 2008 is spot on.
Friday, July 2, 2010
“But here is the punch line:
The regulation doesn’t touch what are likely the next commodity crises (note the plural on crisis).
Forget the fact that the long only commodity ETFs could be a volcano ready to explode on the supply and demand commodity ecosystem. The issue is “Bernie Madoff-style” hedge fund fraud: it will happen again. And this is unnecessary.”
Friday, July 2, 2010
This article from the off-shore Economic Times highlights the fact that institutional investors were climbing into managed futures dispite negative monthly performance. The article points out that liquidity among managed futures programs is a significant reason. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/banking/finance/finance/Hedge-fund-investors-opt-for-liquidity-over-returns/articleshow/6119796.cms CONTENT DISCLOSUREThis web site and related communication substantially represent the opinions of the author and are not reflective [...]
Friday, July 2, 2010
At a time month when the stock market experienced extreme volatility, Managed futures performance benchmarks posted consistently negative performance across the board in May, with the Credit Suisse / Tremont Managed Futures index leading to the downside at -4.13% . The Barclay CTA index was down -1.01 during the month. It is interesting to note [...]
Thursday, July 1, 2010
“However, it should be emphasized that CTAs and direct managed futures accounts are currently significantly regulated relative to hedge funds. What is missing from financial services reform is a spotlight on the many managed account protections that could be applied to the hedge fund world, including private sector counter surveillance, a version of account segregation for fund investments and transparency (gasp…) in fund investments to varying levels.”
Thursday, July 1, 2010
A new white paper, penned by MF Global’s Managed Futures chief Adam Rochlin, contains interesting insight about volatility.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
I don’t entirely agree with the Chairman’s view on the economy being in a “normal” recovery cycle, but there are interesting comments. The key point I liked about Alan Greenspan’s morning interview on CNBC was his acknowledgement regarding non-governmental counter party surveillance in the regulatory structure. This is one of the key features in regulation of [...]
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
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