Archives
Understanding Minimum Investment Sizes
When launching their programs, managers in the futures space are faced with a dilemma. First, they need to choose a trade level. This is an easy process for an equity manager as they often trade 100% of the cash available and sometimes decide to use leverage. However, ALL futures contracts already have the leverage built-in, […]
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 […]
Market Sentiment. I feel that you should pay attention.
Market sentiment is a broad term that encompasses the prevailing feeling that investors have about a market. Measuring this “feeling” can be accomplished in a variety of ways. CNNMoney has a Fear and Greed Index that displays this in a simple format showing when investors are most willing to take on risk or hunker down. […]
Investment Portfolio Design for an Unpredictable World
Investors are always faced with choices. My experience tells me that these choices are often driven by simple quirks of human behavior. Two of these that seem to be big drivers seem to be recency bias and a desire for simplification. Both of these naturally make us poor investors. For example, in March of 2020 […]
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 […]
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.