Browsing: Macro and Managed Futures Funds

There is a high rate of failure among quant funds. These include smart beta, factor investing, statistical arbitrage, and CTAs. Such false positive strategies are a widespread industry problem. Since psychiatrists have long traded on the ability of the human mind to find an elaborate narrative in a random inkRead More

Ray Dalio, in reference to the current financial scene, with its long period of expansion over more than a decade has said, “This set of circumstances is unsustainable and certainly can no longer be pushed…[which] is why I believe that the world is approaching a big paradigm shift.” Dalio hasRead More

The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index was up 0.31% in October. However, it doesn’t measure up to the market next to the MSCI ACWI (Local), which ended October up 1.93%. Eurekahedge’s latest monthly report observes that US-China trade talks resumed, and this led to a certain tentative optimism. Since those areRead More

Machine learning as a way of managing a portfolio is a “wave of the future” with a lot of sea to cover before it breaks on the shore. Meson Capital Partners has sent its investors an update and summary for 2019 Q3 regarding its managed market neutral fund, and thisRead More

Willem Kooyker is folding up his tent at Blenheim Capital, the commodities-focused hedge fund headquartered in an office park in Berkeley Heights, N.J. Kooyker is a legend. In 1981, he went to work at Commodities Corp., Princeton, N.J., where he was a peer of Paul Tudor Jones, Louis Bacon, andRead More

According to the latest report from Eurekahedge, the world’s hedge funds recorded a net growth of $3.4 billion due to performance in September 2019. On the other hand, September also saw large net outflows of $6.2 billion. Assets at the end of the month were down 0.12%.  Looking at fundsRead More

The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index was up in August, 0.17%, easily outperforming the global equity market, as measured by MSCI ACWI, which was down 2.37%. The August number brings the Eurekahedge HFI’s year-to-date result to 6.58%. Approximately 32.6% of the funds Eurekahedge tracks are in double-digits (positive) territory for theRead More

Negative interest rate policy—that is, central bank arrangements that seek to inspire spending by punishing savings, not merely in real but in nominal terms—have spread in recent years among the developed economies, and are now in use in Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, and the Eurozone. Denmark got the ball rolling inRead More

By Nicolas Rabener of FactorResearch (@FactorResearch) INTRODUCTION The mafia and the hedge fund industry share some characteristics. Both are powerful, non-transparent, and create little value for society. Naturally the mafia is a criminal organization while the only “criminal” element of hedge funds are the high fees they are charging forRead More

Global hedge fund assets under management have stayed close to flat for months now. That’s one of the points made in the latest Eurekahedge report. As of July, the AUM is just a little under $2.3 trillion, or roughly where it has been since late last year. Although there haveRead More

The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index was up in June, wrapping up a very strong first half of the year for the hedge fund industry. The monthly increase of 1.83% reverses the down month of May, which in turn was a reversal of the strength of the first four months, withRead More

Red ink spoiled an otherwise positive 2019 for he Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index. The decline of 0.71% leaves the year-to-date performance still well up, at +4.32%. Approximately 41.6% of the funds Eurekahedge tracks were in the black for the month. And 15% have generated double-digit gains year-to-date. North America-mandated hedgeRead More

By Nicolas Rabener of FactorResearch (@FactorResearch) INTRODUCTION Investing is challenging as it is complex and complicated, which requires continuous learning and updating of mental frameworks. Conflicts and contradictions are found everywhere. For example, data from the mutual fund industry shows that most funds fail to outperform their benchmarks, but investors inRead More

By Nicolas Rabener of FactorResearch (@FactorResearch) INTRODUCTION As Amazon has been decimating large parts of the retail industry over the last two decades, ETFs have done the equivalent to the mutual fund industry in the financial world. Today ETFs are covering nearly all areas of the markets, no matter howRead More

March was a good month and the first quarter of 2019 was promising, according to the April report from Eurekahedge. The Eureka Hedge Fund Index gained 1.06% in March. This yields a first quarter return of 4.36%. As the report says, this is the strongest quarterly return since the globalRead More

Martin McCubbin, a senior research analyst at Fidante, looks at the hedge fund performance numbers for 2018 in a new paper, which shows it was a difficult year. Early going in 2019 has been somewhat better, but that the “better” cannot be relied upon. The rest of this year couldRead More

A recent study of public employee retirement systems in the United States reaches conclusions, that, after a fair amount of “grey tsunami” alarmism in recent years, sound reassuring. The study, based on a recent survey of system managements conducted by the National Conference of Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS) inRead More

Risk-on sentiment returned in January, with good news on trade talks and with the Federal Reserve in the United States putting some distance between itself and its 2018 hard-money stance (the Fed started saying in January that it would be “patient” about selling off-balance sheet assets). Globally, hedge funds grewRead More

European hedge fund managers continue to suffer from the uncertainties of the United Kingdom’s impending exit from the EU. The latest report from Eurekahedge says that European hedge funds have posted losses in eight of the first eleven months of 2018. They haven’t been in the positive numbers since July,Read More

Distressed debt markets have four themes emerging, according to a new paper issued by the Wells Fargo Investment Institute They are: the consequences of central bank tightenings around the globe; the elevation of debt levels, also something happening globally; the regulatory pressure over non-conforming loans (especially in Europe); and theRead More

The newest Eurekahedge report says that hedge funds globally are experiencing their worst year since 2008. They are down -2.15% for 2018 to date and in the first 10 months of 2008 they were down a full 9.55%. Other Year-to-Date Numbers Only a minority (roughly 47%) of hedge fund managersRead More

Fidante Partners, part of the Challenger Limited Group, has issued a white paper on the performance of hedge funds of various strategies in the slowdown and recession phases of a business cycle. The report, written by Joachim Klement, Fidente’s head of investment research, posits that the world is now inRead More

According to Eurekahedge, with the July numbers on hedge fund performance now available, 8.5% of hedge fund managers have posted double-digit gains in 2018 to date. Most of that gain is focused on those with a long/short equities mandate. That number is quite low. Eurekahedge contrasts it with the firstRead More

A new paper, by Adriano Tosi, of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, looks at the mispricing of a cross-section of international option returns, which suggests that there is money to be made (in more decorous language a “positive risk premium” may be “commanded,”) by selling exchange-traded products and buying theRead More

BarclayHedge says that its flash estimate for the Barclay CTA Index shows a 0.05% loss in June, and a 2% loss year to date. More remarkably, the flash estimate shows a 16.23% drop in June and a 45.43% drop YTD for the CryptoCurrency Traders Index. The founder and president ofRead More

The newest Eurekahedge report says that total hedge fund assets have grown by $26.4 billion in the year to date (through May). The gain is the result of inflow, not of positive performance. Assets flowing in to the industry’s coffers YTD equal $30 billion, and one gets the net growthRead More

A new BarclayHedge study indicates that the majority of commodity trading advisers surveyed are unenthusiastic about the new Bitcoin futures. Specifically, asked “do you consider Bitcoin futures to be a valuable/useful addition to a diversified futures portfolio?” nearly three quarters (73%) said “no.” The sample for this survey included firmsRead More

The Mekata Investment Group has published a white paper on global macro hedge funds, contending that a position in such a fund is a valuable defensive tool for an institution. Global Macros are valuable because they perform best during turbulent or volatile markets, which is when defense is most needed,Read More

The Alternative Investment Management Association and Societe Generale Prime Services have together put out a white paper about managed futures funds and the commodity trading advisers who manage them. A key themes of the paper is that managed futures strategies aren’t as risky as are typical investments in equity markets.Read More

Excerpted from the Alternative Investment Analyst Review, Volume 1, Issue 4 The Alternative Investment Analyst Review is the official publication of the CAIA Association. Access to the most current issue is an exclusive benefit of CAIA Membership while archived issues are available to the public in the Perspectives section atRead More

Eurekahedge, a provider of hedge fund industry news since 2001, has released its report about the state of the industry in August 2016. Among the key points: August was the fourth consecutive month of outflows. Although preliminary, the data for the month suggests a net asset outflow of $7.5 billion.Read More

The name is awkwardly long, and the standard abbreviation, “RAMOM,” sounds like what one says when cheering on one’s mother as she nears a finish line. Still, risk adjusted time series momentum strategies have something to be said for them, in comparison to cross-sectional momentum (MOM without preface), or evenRead More

The latest report from Eurekahedge indicates that hedge funds’ assets under management are up by $19.9 billion in the first half of 2016 worldwide. Eurekahedge, which tracks the health of the hedge fund industry month by month, also says that total industry performance-based results were down, $5.2 billion, so moreRead More

The latest report from Eurekahedge tells us that hedge funds worldwide are down year-to-date through February, -1.27 percent. Dividing the industry by geographic mandates, Latin America is the only region to post YTD gains, +1.9% due to a rally in oil and commodities. Table 1, adapted from the report below,Read More

By Dana Comolli, president, DMAXX LLC Every trader who has tried to raise money knows the drill from investors: yes we want to know about your performance, but also, explain in detail your back office (infrastructure, organization). Most allocators come with pages of checklists and expect the manager to beRead More

International investors borrow money in countries where interest rates are relatively low, and then lend it out in countries where the rates are higher. All they do is “carry” the money, so to speak, from one country to the other.Read More

The latest Eurekahedge report says that regional mandates for the month of December 2015 produced quite mixed results. Asia ex-Japan managers yielded the best results, gains of 1.45%. Their Japanese counterparts produced 0.27%. In annual terms, Asia ex-Japan funds delivered 8.23% in 2015. Such funds saw an annual AUM growthRead More

In the three month period that ends with July, Eurekahedge’s Greater China Index (which has 85 constituents) is down 9.39%. That has come about for precisely the reasons that a reader of the pertinent headlines would guess. Read More

Eurekahedge's latest report gives a number of timelines for grappling with changes in the hedge fund world: since 2007; since January 2013; YTD January 2015. In any frame, you don't have to be a meteorologist....Read More

Welton has modeled an investment approach, specifically a multi-asset class trend following approach, and has measured how it would have performed if back-fitted into certain periods of sustained and sharp interest rate increases in the decades since the death of Bretton Woods. Read More

To encourage further exchange and understanding, I went back to Mr. Rice, after reading a comment from our reader, and asked him to expand on managed funds and their noncorrelation with traditional (largely equity) investment strategies. Tags, Agriculture, Commodities, Derivatives Read More

Three scholars find a very real possibility that there is a cause and effect relationship between index flows in the derivatives markets, at least the agricultural index markets, on the one hand and price moves in the underlying commodity on the other. Read More

This book, The Alternative Answer: The Nontraditional Investments that Drive the World's Best-Performing Portfolios is an appeal to the retail investor, to those author Bob Rice calls "typical investors," passing along the good news that they are no longer "stuck with the children's menu of investment options."Read More

As a three-judge panel of the D.C. Appeals Court saw it, there were two questions in the Brian Hunter case. First, did the CEA’s language encompass manipulation of NG futures contracts as part of the exclusive jurisdiction of intervener CFTC? Second, if so, was that repealed or modified by the 2005 legislation? Read More

Ninety-one percent of the respondents to a recent survey strongly believed there was a breakdown in audit procedures in the futures world. The comments section for that question displayed what the survey sponsor, Horizon Cash Management, calls “widespread frustration and anger.” Read More

An interview with Christoper Fix, the CEO of Dubai Mercantile Exchange - home of the largest physically delivered crude oil futures contract in the world.Read More

There has been a perhaps-unexpected consequence of the disappearance of the old-fashioned floor traders. Floor trading used to serve as a training regimen, "from which many of the industry's leading discretionary traders originated." Without the floors, the talent pool has dried up.Read More

A deeper look at alternatives with Dr. Bob Swarup, a world-renowned expert and commentator on alternatives and financial markets as well as being a visiting fellow at London School of Economics.Read More

According to its advocates, trend following as a strategy works from the premise that price trends represent a process of consensus building. As a new idea takes hold, "the earliest adopters of this idea place their trades in accordance with it" and they get to watch in satisfaction as "a growing mass of market participants adopts the same thesis. Early adopters can surf the wave to the beach.Read More

Consultants expect that managers' need to generate steady income in a low interest rate environment will drive a lot of portfolio turnover in 2012, inclusive of the movement of alternatives into core positions within portfolios, and it will drive one-time U.S. focused investors and managers to look abroad. Meanwhile, pensions are retreating toward passive mandates. Read More