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A review of the trends that current exist across market sectors suggest that there is significant noise about directions and fundamental changes from last month. The equity bounce post the volatility shock seems to have played out and now new information such as “trade wars” seems to be defining new trends. Bonds seem to be moving back to the core negative correlation with equities. The dollar sell-off also seems to have paused except for traditional safe asset currencies. Metals are now trending down but commodities are responding to a weather shock. While there may be profitable opportunities later this month, current signals are mixed.

Hedge funds as measured by the HFR indices suffered with the overall market decline with only RV strategies being able to take advantage of the higher volatility environment. In general, the equity hedge fund declines were consistent with their longer-term betas (approximately .3 to .6). The outliers for the month were the event driven, special situations, macro and systematic CTAs indices. The year-to-date returns show significant dispersion with equity hedge fund indices generally positive while special situations, systematic CTAs, and event driven indices falling between -2.50 and -3.75 percent.

The managed futures hedge fund category generated poor performance in February as measured by the SocGen CTA index and the SocGen CTA mutual fund index. This behavior was also seen in the BTOP 50 index which declined 5.29 percent for the month. The SocGen short-term traders index was down 4.31 for the month but still up for the year by just over 1%. Nevertheless, the year to date return numbers for managed futures are better than long duration bond performance and the credit sector as measured by the TLT and LQD ETFs.

February was a bad month for investment performance. All of the major ETF indices we normally follow were negative. Diversification was an elusive concept and reinforced the key portfolio allocation risks of rising correlation. There is no positive spin with these numbers other than less risky assets like bonds fell less than more risky assets, although year to date numbers show that bonds have not been a safe haven. There are a few takeaways from the month:

How would you feel about your investment portfolio if you went to sleep at the beginning of the year and woke-up on Friday? What if you stuck your portfolio in a drawer and pulled it out after three months or a year to look at performance?  My guess you would say you were happy and comfortable with your investment decisions, yet there has been a lot of investor anxiety this month.

There was a clear financial shock to the market with the spike in the VIX index earlier this month, but the market has reversed a significant portion of the earlier losses. From the SPY high in January, the market declined about 10.5%. There has been a reversal of 6% so the stock market is now positive for the year and only down 4.5% from the high and down 2% from month-end.

University of Chicago professor Harold Pollack in an interview a few years ago mentioned that the best money advice can fit on a three-by-five inch index card. He was then challenged to write the card. His financial advice went viral. We follow this tradition by focusing on a simple “three-by-five index card” on the VIX volatility spike earlier the month.

Schwerpundt is a German word meaning main focus, center of gravity, or focal point. The term came from Von Clausewitz’s “On War” and refers to the strategic objective or goal of any military campaign or battle. It is the place of greatest importance against an adversary.

Wall Street is filled with characters and “personality”. I have met my share, but a key question is whether some of these personality extremes actually lead to better returns. I have written about this in my posting The Wisdom of Psychopaths and Trading. Some have suggested that the characteristics of psychopaths if directed toward good goals may lead to successful outcomes. The core idea is that a lack of empathy or emotion found in psychopaths is actually good for some jobs. Certainly, there is a strong strain of thinking that trading should be without emotion. Hence, personality characteristics such as less emotion or empathy may be good for return generation. You just may not want to have them as your boss.

Some may say, “A bond is a bond, is a bond”. Investors may place risky assets in one category and then have bonds in a less risky category. This dichotomy does not focus on the important distinctions between bond groups and the roles that different bond categories may play nor does it present the possible trade-offs between return, risk, and correlation within a portfolio from different bonds.

Inflation is a growing concern with many investors. Additionally, there is the perception that financial assets are overvalued. There is a need for diversification across other asset classes given the potential for stock-bond correlation rising in an inflationary environment.

What would have protected investors during the turmoil of last week? With all of the major asset classes falling, not much. Declines were a just a matter of degree. There were some selected instruments that did well, but the “correlation to one” effect, albeit not absolutely true, kicked-in for many assets that were supposed to provide strong diversification. However, there was a protection instrument that did provide safety, gold. Although slightly under bond returns for the Barclay Aggregate index through the first twelve days of the month, it has generated gains for the year and certainty beat long-term Treasury bonds.

The dollar may be trending down, but investors should also look at the second order effects of what will happen to other markets. For example, a declining dollar is good for long commodity exposure. The long commodity argument is twofold, one, a decline in the dollar makes commodities denominated in dollars cheaper to foreign buyers which will increase demand; two, a decline in the dollar associated with global growth will increase global commodity demand. There are both substitution and income effects.