IASG, Author at IASG
Q1 Agricultural Market Commentary
Guest post by Malinda Goldsmith of Four Seasons Commodities Agricultural markets have completed monstrous seven-year bear moves for good reason. Consider that we’ve had four years in a row of record or near-record crops, generally benign growing seasons in North America, ever-larger crops in South America, a strong dollar and a trade war which focused […]
Why Traditional Hedges Fail
An article by Scot Billington, Covenant Capital Management Unfortunately, most traditional hedges fail to deliver in several key areas. Buy-and-hold investing has been wildly successful since 1982; however, its adherents have had to endure two 50% drawdowns, a 25% down day, and 14 years of zero return. Long-term wealth is significantly impacted by drawdowns of […]
Commodities: A Range of Opportunities for 2021 – Market Outlook
“With a new secular bull trend, Commodities are among the most attractive markets this year. This commodity environment could be an exceptional moment to be in a spread program.” The economic pendulum tends to be swinging towards commodities. The notion that low commodity prices are their own cure may be playing out in 2021[1], with […]
CTA Spotlight: Adalpha Asset Management
Diversified Short Term Program Overview “The whole reason my algorithms work, the way they work in all environments, they’ve been working so long is because I’m a prop trader. And that’s what a CTA doesn’t have on me. “ Gary Polony describes in his quiet office on the 38th floor of the Chicago Board of […]
Webinar on Market Volatility in the Covid era
Tune in October 7th at 4pm CDT to listen to Ernie Chan from QTS Capital and Damon Pavlatos talk about how they view and trade volatility around major world events. This event is sponsored in part by IASG Fund Services. Dr. Ernest Chan Damon Pavlatos Exogenous events affect the financial markets with downside volatility. Technical […]
Cayler Capital | April Performance Commentary
After finishing off one of the wildest quarters of my trading career, April managed to take the cake. For those that missed it (not sure how you possibly could have), oil settled negative $37. The effects of this were immediate: risk barometers had to be recalculated, option models switched, and most importantly was the immediate […]
Quantica Quarterly Insights – Why speed matters
The second half of Q1 2020 turned out to be one of the most volatile periods ever for financial markets. The intensity and speed of the equity market sell-off has been unprecedented and market volatility has reached higher levels than during the peak of the financial crisis in 2008. The design of systematic trend-following programs involves many different building blocks, such as signal generation models, the structure of the investment universe, risk allocation targets between different asset classes, risk management models and portfolio construction methodology.
March & April Intra-Month Performance Updates
Wow what a month March turned out to be on the heels of February. During the COVID-19 outbreak we saw a huge volatility surge again in March across almost all asset classes from equities to rates to commodities. We showed a brief intra-month view of several managers we track and, good, bad or indifferent wanted […]
IASG Moves Into Crypto Hedge Fund Space With New Managed Account Offering
Institutional Advisory Services Group (IASG) is making a concerted push into the crypto hedge fund space with a new crypto managed account offering. IASG has launched a new website, https://www.iasgcrypto.com/, which tracks the performance of fifteen cryptocurrency hedge fund managers, enabling its high net worth and family office clients to see the performance of these funds […]
Why does the Tail Reaper program work in times of market turmoil?
Guest post by Ernest Chan of QTS Capital Management As the name of our Tail Reaper program implies, it is designed to benefit from tail events. It did so (+20.07%) during August-December, 2015’s Chinese stock market crash (even though it trades only the E-mini S&P 500 index futures), it did so (+18.38%) during February-March 2018’s […]
Oil Flood – Case for $15 Oil
Guest post by Brent Belote of Cayler Capital Russia broke the oil market! Russia and the Saudis have entered into a dangerous game of chicken with each other. Russia is determined to punish US Oil Producers while the Saudis are attempting to force OPEC+ back in line. To simplify, Russia would not comply with OPEC+ […]
We Are All Survivors
Duncan Coker — Rivercast Capital Management — January 2020 Congratulations! If you are reading this article, you are a survivor! Granted, on some days, nothing seems to go right, but compared to the alternative, life is good. It tends to give us an optimistic outlook, as it should. Optimism is a great thing; without it, […]
COMMODITIES A RANGE OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR 2020
We consider grains to be one of the most exciting markets for this year, an increase in the U.S. grain export will support prices, but only if the U.S. dollar stabilizes or declines. Corn and Wheat seem to be at a discount from their previous years’ price average; a definitive US-China trade deal could impact grains to have sharp moves in the year. We also anticipate an inflow of institutional money into grains that will move futures prices of different expiration. This is an optimal environment for our trading program.