commodity trading advisor

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Commodity Trading Advisors: Risk, Performance Analysis, and Selection by Greg N. Gregoriou, Vassilios Karavas, François-Serge Lhabitant, Fabrice Douglas Rouah

Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, backtesting, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, collateralized debt obligation, commodity trading advisor, compound rate of return, constrained optimization, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, discrete time, distributed generation, diversification, diversified portfolio, dividend-yielding stocks, financial engineering, fixed income, global macro, high net worth, implied volatility, index arbitrage, index fund, interest rate swap, iterative process, linear programming, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, market fundamentalism, merger arbitrage, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, p-value, Pareto efficiency, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, selection bias, Sharpe ratio, short selling, stochastic process, survivorship bias, systematic trading, tail risk, technology bubble, transaction costs, value at risk, zero-sum game

Fung and Hsieh (1997a) found that trend-following styles have a return profile similar to a long option straddle position—a long volatility position. Fung and Hsieh (1997b) documented that commodity trading advisors apply predominantly trend-following strategies. Measuring the Long Volatility Strategies of Managed Futures 185 In our research we use three Barclay Commodity Trading Advisor indices to capture the trading dynamics of the CTA market: Commodity Trading Index, Diversified Commodity Trading Advisor Index, and Systematic Trading Index. These indices are an equally weighted average of a group of CTAs who identify themselves as belonging to one of the three strategies.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Commodity trading advisors : risk, performance analysis, and selection / [edited by] Greg N. Gregoriou . . . [et al.]. p. cm. ISBN 0-471-68194-6 (cloth) 1. Commodity trading advisors. I. Gregoriou, Greg N., 1956– HG6046.5.C66 2004 332.64'4—dc22 2004007925 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xi About the Editors xiii About the Authors xv Introduction xxiii PART ONE Performance 1 CHAPTER 1 Managed Futures and Hedge Funds: A Match Made in Heaven 5 Harry M.

CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 9 Measuring the Long Volatility Strategies of Managed Futures Mark Anson and Ho Ho ertain hedge fund strategies create investment positions that resemble a long put option. Specifically, managed futures or commodity trading advisors have significant exposure to volatility events. This exposure is positively related to volatility much like a long option position. We identify and measure this long volatility exposure, which may not always be transparent from the trading positions of a commodity trading advisor. We also examine ways to apply these long volatility strategies to improve risk management. C INTRODUCTION The managed futures industry has come full circle in its application over the last 15 years.


pages: 317 words: 106,130

The New Science of Asset Allocation: Risk Management in a Multi-Asset World by Thomas Schneeweis, Garry B. Crowder, Hossein Kazemi

asset allocation, backtesting, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, book value, business cycle, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, collateralized debt obligation, commodity trading advisor, correlation coefficient, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, diversification, diversified portfolio, financial engineering, fixed income, global macro, high net worth, implied volatility, index fund, interest rate swap, invisible hand, managed futures, market microstructure, merger arbitrage, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, passive investing, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, search costs, selection bias, Sharpe ratio, short selling, statistical model, stocks for the long run, survivorship bias, systematic trading, technology bubble, the market place, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, transaction costs, value at risk, yield curve, zero-sum game

., event driven, equity long short, and emerging markets) had the most negative returns in the worst S&P 500 months as well as the highest positive returns in the months in which the S&P 500 had its best performance. MANAGED FUTURES (COMMODITY TRADING ADVISORS) The term “managed futures” represents an industry composed of professional money managers known as commodity trading advisors (CTAs) or commodity pool operators (CPOs). Commodity trading advisors or commodity pool operators manage client assets on a discretionary basis, using forwards, futures, and options markets as the primary investment area. Managed futures, through their ability to take both long and short investment positions in international financial and non-financial asset sectors, offer risk and return patterns not easily accessible through traditional (such as long-only stock and bond portfolios) or other nontraditional investments (e.g., hedge funds, real estate, private equity, or commodities).

For systematic trend-following global macro managers who trade primarily in futures and option markets, returns are similar to those of commodity trading advisors. CASAM/CISDM Fund of Funds Index (CISDM Fund of Funds): The median performance of all hedge fund of funds managers reporting to the CASAM/ CISDM Hedge Fund Database. Its objective is to provide an estimate of the rate of return to fund of funds which invest in hedge fund managers. Fund of funds managers have discretion in creating funds of funds which reflect either a single strategy or a wide range of underlying hedge fund strategies. CTA INDICES Barclay CTA Index: A benchmark of representative performance of commodity trading advisors reporting to the Barclay Group.

See CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model) Capital International Stock Indices, 168 Capital Market Line (CML), 5–6 CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model), 4–6, 18, 62–63 acceptance of, 28 and efficient market hypothesis, 6–10 and market risk, 43 Cash flow, 98 Casualty insurance, 98 CISDM CTA indices, 149, 150, 261, 262 CISDM ELS index, 193 CISDM Fund of Fund indices, 267, 268 CISDM Hedge Fund indices, 55, 131, 142, 144, 145, 185 CISDM indices, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263 Clustering, volatility, 95 Collar strategy, 234 Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), 228, 229 Commodities, 59, 61, 65, 129, 130, 143–148, 160–165 benchmarks, 179–185, 275 futures, 12 Index return and risk performance, 162–163 volatility, 182, 185 Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), 11 Commodity pool operators (CPOs), 143 Commodity Research Bureau, 265, 266 Commodity risk, 196 Commodity trading advisors. See CTAs (commodity trading advisors) Conditional model, 41 Conditional performance evaluation, 53–54 Constant proportional portfolio insurance (CPPI), 107 Convexity, 49–50 Core allocation, 110–133 Correlation analysis, 34, 116 Correlations, 24, 68–69, 214 between Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate and S&P 500, 267 benchmark, 137 betwen cash and futures price changes, 204 CISDM CTA indices, 149 between CISDM Fund of Fund indices and BarCap U.S.


pages: 297 words: 91,141

Market Sense and Nonsense by Jack D. Schwager

3Com Palm IPO, asset allocation, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Brownian motion, buy and hold, collateralized debt obligation, commodity trading advisor, computerized trading, conceptual framework, correlation coefficient, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversification, diversified portfolio, fixed income, global macro, high net worth, implied volatility, index arbitrage, index fund, Jim Simons, junk bonds, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, merger arbitrage, negative equity, pattern recognition, performance metric, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Shiller, selection bias, Sharpe ratio, short selling, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, survivorship bias, tail risk, transaction costs, two-sided market, value at risk, yield curve

Market Sense and Nonsense is now required reading for every investor (and the sooner they read it, the better). Joel Greenblatt August 2012 Prologue* Many years ago when I worked as a research director for one of the major Wall Street brokerage firms, one of my job responsibilities included evaluating commodity trading advisors (CTAs).1 One of the statistics that CTAs were required by the regulatory authorities to report was the percentage of client accounts that closed with a profit. I made the striking discovery that the majority of closed accounts showed a net loss for virtually all the CTAs I reviewed—even those who had no losing years!

Markets. Performance may often be more indicative of the market environment than the skill of the manager. Even if two managers fall into the same strategy category, if they trade different markets, then comparisons can be very misleading. For example, if two managers are both trend-following commodity trading advisors (CTAs), but one trades only commodity markets and the other trades foreign exchange (FX), a comparison when one market sector was largely trending and the other experiencing choppy price action (a highly unfavorable environment) would say more about the relative trendiness of the sectors than the skill differences between the managers.

The success of a global macro fund is dependent on the manager’s ability to correctly analyze the probable price direction of major global market trends and to successfully time implied trades. Managed futures and FX (CTAs). This group of managers executes all their trades in the futures or FX markets, or both. These types of managers are typically referred to as CTAs, a term that stands for commodity trading advisors, the official designation for managers registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and members of the National Futures Association (NFA). The term is a misnomer on at least two counts. First, a CTA is a fund or account manager with direct investment responsibility and not an advisor as the name appears to suggest.


pages: 467 words: 154,960

Trend Following: How Great Traders Make Millions in Up or Down Markets by Michael W. Covel

Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Atul Gawande, backtesting, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California energy crisis, capital asset pricing model, Carl Icahn, Clayton Christensen, commodity trading advisor, computerized trading, correlation coefficient, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Thorp, Elliott wave, Emanuel Derman, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Everything should be made as simple as possible, fiat currency, fixed income, Future Shock, game design, global macro, hindsight bias, housing crisis, index fund, Isaac Newton, Jim Simons, John Bogle, John Meriwether, John Nash: game theory, linear programming, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, market microstructure, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, mental accounting, money market fund, Myron Scholes, Nash equilibrium, new economy, Nick Leeson, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Shiller, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, South Sea Bubble, Stephen Hawking, survivorship bias, systematic trading, Teledyne, the scientific method, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, transaction costs, upwardly mobile, value at risk, Vanguard fund, William of Occam, zero-sum game

William Dunnigan (1954) In the fall of 2008 I noticed an academic paper right at the time trend followers were having some of their best performance ever. The title of the paper, taking a stab at trend traders (commonly referred to by the regulatory name of Commodity Trading Advisor), was: “Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: The Inefficient Performance and Persistence of Commodity Trading Advisors” The author Geetesh Bhardwaj wrote that paper while working at AIG Financial Products. So Bhardwaj was part of a firm that took $150 billion of taxpayer dollars to stay afloat, but rips a strategy (trend following) that actually makes money without the government propping it up?

Dunn Capital Management, Inc. 18. Carla Cavaletti, Comeback Kids: Managing Drawdowns According to Commodity Trading Advisors. Futures, Vol. 27, No. 1 (January 1998), 68. 19. Michael Peltz, John W. Henry’s Bid to Manage the Future. Institutional Investor (August 1996). 20. D. Harding, G. Nakou and A. Nejjar, “The Pros and Cons of Drawdown as a Statistical Measure of Risk for Investments.” AIMA Journal, April 2003, 16–17. 21. Carla Cavaletti, Comeback Kids: Managing Drawdowns According to Commodity Trading Advisors. Futures, Vol. 27, No. 1 (January 1998), 68. 22. The Value of a Long-Term Perspective. Marketing Document.

The way I see it, you have two choices—you can do what I did and work for 30-plus years, cobbling together scraps of information, seeking to create a money-making strategy, or you can spend a few days reading Covel’s book and skip that three-decade learning curve. About Larr y Hite Larry Hite founded Mint Investments in 1983. By 1990, Mint Investments had become the largest commodity trading advisor in the world in terms of assets under management. Mint’s achievements won Hite and his team industry-wide acclaim, and in 1990, Jack Schwager dedicated an entire chapter of his bestselling book, Market Wizards, to Hite’s trading and risk management philosophy. Preface “Men wanted for hazardous journey.


pages: 504 words: 139,137

Efficiently Inefficient: How Smart Money Invests and Market Prices Are Determined by Lasse Heje Pedersen

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Andrei Shleifer, asset allocation, backtesting, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Black-Scholes formula, book value, Brownian motion, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, buy the rumour, sell the news, capital asset pricing model, commodity trading advisor, conceptual framework, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, currency peg, currency risk, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, discounted cash flows, diversification, diversified portfolio, Emanuel Derman, equity premium, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, frictionless, frictionless market, global macro, Gordon Gekko, implied volatility, index arbitrage, index fund, interest rate swap, junk bonds, late capitalism, law of one price, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, market clearing, market design, market friction, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, merger arbitrage, money market fund, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, New Journalism, paper trading, passive investing, Phillips curve, price discovery process, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Shiller, selection bias, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, stocks for the long run, stocks for the long term, survivorship bias, systematic trading, tail risk, technology bubble, time dilation, time value of money, total factor productivity, transaction costs, two and twenty, value at risk, Vanguard fund, yield curve, zero-coupon bond

This strategy earns an interest rate differential, essentially borrowing one currency at low interest and investing in another currency with a higher interest rate, but it is exposed to the risk that the relative values of the currencies can change. Managed futures investors (also called commodity trading advisors, CTAs) trade many of the same securities as global macro traders: bond futures, equity index futures, currency forwards, and commodity futures. Managed futures investors often focus on finding price trends, buying instruments that are trending up, and shorting instruments that are trending down.

Another approach is to think in terms of discrete trades: ○ For each asset, determine when to enter a new trade and how to size the initial position. ○ Determine how the position is resized over time, depending on the circumstances. ○ Determine when to exit the trade. For instance, if the price of gold goes above its highest value over the past 20 days (what some commodity trading advisors (CTAs) and managed futures traders call a breakout), then buy gold futures. Hold the position until the gold price drops below its 10-day minimum. With this kind of enter–exit rule, you may or may not have a gold position at any time. Furthermore, if you pursue this type of trading rule using many securities, you could have many or few positions on at any time, so your risk varies over time.

—Jesse Livermore David Ricardo’s imperative, which has survived two centuries, suggests an attention to trends.1 Trends are also at the heart of the century-old statement by the legendary trader Jesse Livermore, and trends continue to play an important role for active investors. The traders who are most directly focused on trend-following investing are the managed futures hedge funds and commodity trading advisors (CTAs). Such funds have existed at least since Richard Donchian started his fund in 1949, and they have proliferated since the 1970s when futures exchanges expanded the set of tradable contracts. BarclayHedge estimates that the CTA industry has grown, managing approximately $320 billion as of the end of the first quarter of 2012.2 Managed futures returns can be largely understood by simple, implementable trend-following strategies—specifically time series momentum strategies.


pages: 231 words: 64,734

Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms by Mark Spitznagel

Albert Einstein, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, asset allocation, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, book value, Brownian motion, Buckminster Fuller, cognitive dissonance, commodity trading advisor, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, delayed gratification, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Thorp, fiat currency, financial engineering, Fractional reserve banking, global macro, Henri Poincaré, hindsight bias, Long Term Capital Management, Mark Spitznagel, Paul Samuelson, phenotype, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, Schrödinger's Cat, Sharpe ratio, spice trade, Steve Jobs, tail risk, the scientific method, transaction costs, value at risk, yield curve, zero-sum game

The alpha prototype in the center makes a 20% nominal annual return in the crash bucket (when the SPX is down 15% or more for the year), 7.5% in the second bucket (when the SPX is down less than 15%), and 5% in the other two buckets. It provides a nice negative correlation in a crash and is always positive‐carry. (This is obviously a highly idealized version of this alpha safe haven—what any investor would choose, for better or worse.) This looks somewhat like the intended performance of systematic trend‐following commodity trading advisor (CTA) strategies, global macro and long‐volatility strategies, or even gold. And it also looks like an “at‐the‐money put” on the SPX—that you're actually paid to own. The insurance prototype on the right makes an explosive profit of 1,000% in the crash bucket and loses 100% in every other year (whenever the SPX isn't down by 15% or more).

A Warped Payoff: 20‐Year Treasury Bonds Neptune or Vulcan—Treasuries look an awful lot like a hopeful haven or a diworsifier haven. GO WITH THE FLOW As we move further down the spectrum of safe haven payoffs and mechanisms, we arrive at the alpha safe haven. Recall that this was so named to look very much like the idealized case of a CTA strategy. CTAs (or commodity trading advisors) are generally a trend‐following strategy: Once a security has moved in a certain direction (up or down) for a certain amount of time, a trend has been established and the CTA would go long or short that security as long as the trend remains. They thus tend to be momentum, go‐with‐the‐flow strategies that rely on persistence in price movements—a sort of long‐option‐replicating strategy.

., 40–42, 53–54, 77, 94–95 with insurance, 88–90, 94–95, 188 and Kelly optimal bet size, 84, 85 and median, 74 with Nietzsche's demon, 66–70 in Petersburg merchant trade, 48 in Petersburg wager, 34–35 reductionist understanding of, 125 of SPX portfolio with safe havens, 131–132 on US Treasuries, 172 when betting less of your stack, 79 Arithmetic cost: as change in arithmetic average returns, 136 in cost‐effectiveness analysis, 136–142 for CTA returns, 176–178 and efficiency, 202 for gold, 181 and Kelly optimal bet size, 84–86, 94 in no‐crash bootstrap, 146 in Petersburg merchant trade, 47 for real‐world safe havens, 184 and safe haven frontier, 186 tradeoff between geometric effect and, 152 when betting less of your stack, 79 when reshuffling returns, 143 Ars Conjectandi (Jacob Bernoulli), 30 Austrian School, 37 Auto racing, 155–157 B Babylonians, 40 Balanced portfolio, 172 Basel, Switzerland, 29 Basis risk, 169 Bastiat, Frédéric, 153–154 Bayesians, 24 Belief, 61 Bernoulli, Daniel: admonition and imperative of, 195 background of, 30–31 and concavity of curve, 54–56 emolumentum medium concept of, 35–39, 198 and geometric average, 39–42 and geometric mean maximization criterion, 81 Latané influenced by, 80 and math of compounding, 52–54 original Saint Petersburg Paradox, 31–34 Paris Academy Grand Prizes for, 31 second Saint Petersburg Paradox, 43–52, 115 Bernoulli, Jacob, 29–30, 67, 70 Bernoulli, Johann, 29–31 Bernoulli, Nicolas, 31–33 Bernoulli function, 37–39, 52 Bernoulli principle, 31 Bernoulli's expected value (BEV): in emolumentum, 38–39 as geometric average, 40–42 with Nietzsche's demon, 73 in Petersburg merchant trade, 48–49 Bias: hindsight, 113 opportunity cost neglect, 153 Biology: classification of living things in, 100–104 phenotypes in, 105 Bitcoin, 181, 182 Black swans, 16 Book value, 104 Bootstrap methodology: checking for blindspots in, 144–148 comparing 25 SPX returns with 25 safe haven returns, 128–132 to counteract naïve empiricism, 127 higher wealth in, 162–163 as nonparametric estimation, 128 for real‐world safe havens, see Real‐world safe havens reshuffling 25 SPX returns and 25 safe haven returns, 142–144 “with replacement,” 128–129 Brachistochrone problem, 29–30 Breiman, Leo, 80 Buffett, Warren: on buying during/after stock market crashes, 149–150 on diversification, 115–116 on losing money, 56 value investing by, 104 Bürgi (Swiss clockmaker), 40 C CAGR, see Compound annual growth rate Calculus of variations, 30 Capital base, 77 Cash, 170–175, 182–184 Casino, 23–24, 30–31, 65, 81–82, 87, 194 you are not a, 76, 82, 200 Cassandras, 111 CEA, see Cost‐effectiveness analysis Central banks, distortions built up by, 11 Change, within species, 102 Chemical industrial agriculture, 154–155 “Cigar butt” companies, 104 Classification: of living things, 100–102 of safe havens, see Taxonomy of safe havens Clinical trials, 129–136 Commodities shipping paradox, 43–52 Commodity trading advisor (CTA) strategies, 108, 175–178, 182–184 Complacency, 114 Compound annual growth rate (CAGR). See also Geometric average returns as actual realized ending wealth, 15 in cost‐effectiveness analysis, 136–142 lowering risk to raise, 163 in no‐crash bootstrap, 146–148 for real‐world safe havens, 166, 184, 185 rise in, over time, 16, 20–21 for safe havens and for SPX portfolio, 131–135 and stock market crashes, 196 for 25‐year compounded SPX returns, 121 for US Treasuries, 172 Compound growth, 49–50, 135 Compounding: Buffett on, 56 and Kelly optimal bet size, 84 mathematics of, 52–54 as most destructive force, 198–201 as most powerful force, 198, 200–201 with Nietzsche's demon, 70–72 and non‐ergodicity, 76 over time, 14 with Schrödinger's demon, 68–69 selecting from sample space for, 62 Concavity of curve, 54–56, 95, 198 Conditional payoffs, 104 Conditional return, 90 Confidence interval, 72 Context dependence, 127 Convexity of payoffs, 106–109 Correlation to systematic exposure, 105–109 Cost(s): arithmetic, 47.


Trend Commandments: Trading for Exceptional Returns by Michael W. Covel

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, business cycle, buy and hold, commodity trading advisor, correlation coefficient, delayed gratification, disinformation, diversified portfolio, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, family office, full employment, global macro, Jim Simons, Lao Tzu, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, market bubble, market microstructure, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Nick Leeson, oil shock, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Sharpe ratio, systematic trading, the scientific method, three-martini lunch, transaction costs, tulip mania, upwardly mobile, Y2K, zero-sum game

., 181 268 Index Business Cycles and Forecasting (Bratt), 230 conversion to trend following, 155 buy-and-hold strategy, 151-153 courage, 30 defined, 12 Cowles, Alfred III, 228 Warren Buffett, 157-158 Cox, Christopher, 169 C Cramer, Jim, 162 calculated risk, 56 crashes, trend following during, 97-98 Californication (television program), 211 critical thinking, defined, 217 capitalism, 113-115 critics’ responses to trend following, 193-196 change in markets, 45 crowd mentality, 117-120 Clews, Henry, 224 CTAs (commodity trading advisors), defined, 11 Clinton, Bill, 181-182 CNBC, 161-163, 177, 215-218 Cohn, Gary, 175 commitment, importance of, 127-128 curiosity, importance of, 207-208 current trends, defined, 39 Cutten, Arthur W., 223 Commodities Corporation, 69 D commodity trading advisors (CTAs), defined, 11 decisions, immediacy of, 131-132 The Complete TurtleTrader (Covel), 199 compounding, importance of, 22-23 degrees, worth of, 123 delay in decision-making, avoiding, 131-132 Dennis, Richard, 199 computers, role in trend following, 87-88 “Determining Optimal Risk” (Druz and Seykota), 62 consistency, 139 diversified portfolios, example of, 65-67 Contact (film), 4 contradictions in market predictions, 175-178 Donahue, Phil, 113 Donchian, Richard, 230-231, 239 Index Dow Theory, 225-226 fat tails, 137 Dow, Charles H., 225 Faulkner, Charles, 59 drawdowns, 69-70 Field, Jacob, 226 Druz, David, 18, 62 50 Cent, 166 Duchovny, David, 211 financial bubbles, irrational behavior in, 25-26 Dunn, Bill, 15-16, 195 Dunnigan, William, 229-230, 239 E Economic Bill of Rights, 114 economic philosophy, assumptions in, 25 economy, effect on presidential approval ratings, 181-182 Edwards, Robert D., 226 Efficient-Markets Hypothesis, 101-102 Elizabeth II (queen of England), 47 Elliott, R.

Let men be fools because that is part of their nature.3 Henry Ford: “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”1 Jargon To avoid confusion throughout Trend Commandments, a few of Wall Street’s favorite catch phrases need to be defined. I am defining these because Wall Street suits use them to sell. Do not let the jargon engulf you. CTA: CTA stands for commodity trading advisor. It is a government term used to classify regulated fund managers who primarily trade futures markets. Almost all successful CTAs trade as trend following traders. CTAs are the other quants the media never seems to cover accurately. Managed Futures: This is a term that describes regulated fund managers who use futures to trade for clients.


pages: 327 words: 91,351

Traders at Work: How the World's Most Successful Traders Make Their Living in the Markets by Tim Bourquin, Nicholas Mango

algorithmic trading, automated trading system, backtesting, buy and hold, commodity trading advisor, Credit Default Swap, Elliott wave, financial engineering, fixed income, global macro, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, paper trading, pattern recognition, prediction markets, risk tolerance, Small Order Execution System, statistical arbitrage, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, zero-sum game

The ones that didn’t make it into the report were my worst, probably because I didn’t justify to myself, to my readers, why I was getting into it in the first place. Funny how it worked that way. CHAPTER 2 Linda Raschke Linda Bradford Raschke has been a full-time professional trader since 1981. She began as a market maker in equity options and was a member and floor trader on two exchanges. In the early 1990s, Raschke became a registered Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) and started LBRGroup, Inc., a professional money management firm. In addition to running successful CTA programs, she has been principal trader for several hedge funds and has run commercial hedging programs. She was recognized in Jack Schwager’s book, The New Market Wizards (John Wiley & Sons, 1992), and in Sue Herera’s book, Women of the Street (John Wiley & Sons, 1997).

I’m mainly trying to align my trading operation in a way that enforces discipline for me and also looks relatively attractive and businesslike from the perspective of someone who may want me to manage their capital for them. Bourquin: And are you managing other people’s money right now as well? Wilson: Yes, I am. I’m registered with the National Futures Association [NFA], and I’m a registered commodity trading advisor [CTA]. Bourquin: Do you take money out of those managed accounts to pay yourself, or, because you have a career, do you reinvest and let your profits run and continually build your account? Wilson: All the management fees come out at the end of every month, and I just let those accumulate outside the account.

It’s valuable as a trader to not only have the independence of trading your own account, but at the same time be involved and work with other human beings. It can be fun, too. Bourquin: Speaking of the business aspect of trading, have you ever thought about managing money? Carter: It’s funny you asked that, because I actually just started a commodity trading advisor [CTA] fund, called Razor Trading, as well as an options auto-trading service. Personally, I don’t mind taking a lot of risk in my own account, and even though investors will initially always say to go ahead and do the same for them, they’ll start freaking out as soon as they see the first drawdown.


pages: 385 words: 128,358

Inside the House of Money: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Profiting in a Global Market by Steven Drobny

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, Berlin Wall, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, capital controls, central bank independence, commoditize, commodity trading advisor, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, Credit Default Swap, currency risk, diversification, diversified portfolio, family office, financial engineering, fixed income, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, Greenspan put, high batting average, implied volatility, index fund, inflation targeting, interest rate derivative, inventory management, inverted yield curve, John Meriwether, junk bonds, land bank, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, market bubble, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Maui Hawaii, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nick Leeson, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, out of africa, panic early, paper trading, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, price anchoring, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, rolodex, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Silicon Valley, tail risk, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, transaction costs, value at risk, Vision Fund, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

If I have a list of things that their computer says to look at, like India bank stocks or swaps in Sweden or the Canadian dollar, then I have no excuse not to look.What we’re trying to do is develop computer-driven systems to identify price changes that appear nonrandom, not for trading so much but as a research tool. Over time, maybe it will develop into a trading system, which would be great because one thing we all know is that, on average, Commodity Trading Advisors’ (CTA) trading models work. What are some trades that you have in your absolute return book right now? Is India in there? I would count India in that category of having outperformance potential but not in terms of having a separate 10 percent allocation. We actually want to get India to a 10 percent allocation such that it becomes 50 percent of our equity allocation.We haven’t thought of India as a 10 percent nonsystematic bet, although maybe it should be.

I could walk down onto the floor right now and sell a billion dollars of anything. It will make some noise but it will get done quickly. That’s a phenomenal change from the old psyche. It’s one of those things where you have to be careful what you wish for—it may just come true.The hedge fund/Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) game is getting to the point where it’s starting to turn in on itself. 204 INSIDE THE HOUSE OF MONEY In the currency markets, at least you have central banks, corporates, banks, and other anonymous, distant entities to trade against. But the other markets are just full of speculators beating each other up.

People often get it wrong and think it’s price that reverts to the mean, but that is not the case in commodities. It is margins that revert to the mean, so paying up is something you need to do. Adding to a position that is going your way has always been a tough one for fundamental discretionary traders but a hallmark of systematic black box Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs). Has the huge increase in capital allocated to CTAs (see Figure 12.3) forced you to change your style? It’s changed a little bit in the way we size our positions. Because all these CTAs tend to be shorter duration, their money flows can change the short-term volatility.They can cause dislocations and inef25,000 140 120 Assets Barclay CTA Index 100 15,000 80 60 10,000 40 5,000 20 0 19 79 19 80 19 81 19 82 19 83 19 84 19 85 19 86 19 87 19 88 19 89 19 90 19 91 19 92 19 93 19 94 19 95 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 0 FIGURE 12.3 1979–2004 Barclay Group CTA Index and CTA Assets under Management, Reprinted courtesy of Sol Waksman and The Barclay Group.


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Expected Returns: An Investor's Guide to Harvesting Market Rewards by Antti Ilmanen

Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset allocation, asset-backed security, availability heuristic, backtesting, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, Bob Litterman, bond market vigilante , book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, carbon credits, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, commodity trading advisor, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, deal flow, debt deflation, deglobalization, delta neutral, demand response, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, diversification, diversified portfolio, dividend-yielding stocks, equity premium, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, framing effect, frictionless, frictionless market, G4S, George Akerlof, global macro, global reserve currency, Google Earth, high net worth, hindsight bias, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, income inequality, incomplete markets, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, invisible hand, John Bogle, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, law of one price, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, market friction, market fundamentalism, market microstructure, mental accounting, merger arbitrage, mittelstand, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, negative equity, New Journalism, oil shock, p-value, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, pension time bomb, performance metric, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price anchoring, price stability, principal–agent problem, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, riskless arbitrage, Robert Shiller, savings glut, search costs, selection bias, seminal paper, Sharpe ratio, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, stochastic volatility, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, survivorship bias, systematic trading, tail risk, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, value at risk, volatility arbitrage, volatility smile, working-age population, Y2K, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Antti Ilmanen Bad Homburg, November 2010 Abbreviations and acronyms AM Arithmetic Mean ATM At The Money (option) AUM Assets Under Management BEI Break-Even Inflation BF Behavioral Finance B/P Book/Price, book-to-market ratio BRP Bond Risk Premium, term premium B-S Black–Scholes C-P BRP Cochrane–Piazzesi Bond Risk Premium CAPM Capital Asset Pricing Model CAY Consumption wealth ratio CB Central Bank CCW Covered Call Writing CDO Collateralized Debt Obligation CDS Credit Default Swap CF Cash Flow CFNAI Chicago Fed National Activity Index CFO Chief Financial Officer CMD Commodity (futures) CPIyoy Consumer Price Inflation year on year CRB Commodity Research Bureau CRP Credit Risk Premium (over Treasury bond) CRRA Constant Relative Risk Aversion CTA Commodity Trading Advisor DDM Dividend Discount Model DJ CS Dow Jones Credit Suisse DMS Dimson–Marsh–Staunton D/P Dividend/Price (ratio), dividend yield DR Diversification Return E( ) Expected (conditional expectation) EMH Efficient Markets Hypothesis E/P Earnings/Price ratio, earnings yield EPS Earnings Per Share ERP Equity Risk Premium ERPB Equity Risk Premium over Bond (Treasury) ERPC Equity Risk Premium over Cash (Treasury bill) F Forward price or futures price FF Fama–French FI Fixed Income FoF Fund of Funds FX Foreign eXchange G Growth rate GARCH Generalized AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity GC General Collateral repo rate (money market interest rate) GDP Gross Domestic Product GM Geometric Mean, also compound annual return GP General Partner GSCI Goldman Sachs Commodity Index H Holding-period return HF Hedge Fund HFR Hedge Fund Research HML High Minus Low, a value measure, also VMG HNWI High Net Worth Individual HPA House Price Appreciation (rate) HY High Yield, speculative-rated debt IG Investment Grade (rated debt) ILLIQ Measure of a stock’s illiquidity: average absolute daily return over a month divided by dollar volume IPO Initial Public Offering IR Information Ratio IRP Inflation Risk Premium ISM Business confidence index ITM In The Money (option) JGB Japanese Government Bond K-W BRP Kim–Wright Bond Risk Premium LIBOR London InterBank Offered Rate, a popular bank deposit rate LP Limited Partner LSV Lakonishok–Shleifer–Vishny LtA Limits to Arbitrage LTCM Long-Term Capital Management MA Moving Average MBS (fixed rate, residential) Mortgage-Backed Securities MIT-CRE MIT Center for Real Estate MOM Equity MOMentum proxy MSCI Morgan Stanley Capital International MU Marginal Utility NBER National Bureau of Economic Research NCREIF National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries OAS Option-Adjusted (credit) Spread OTM Out of The Money (option) P Price P/B Price/Book (valuation ratio) P/E Price/Earnings (valuation ratio) PE Private Equity PEH Pure Expectations Hypothesis PT Prospect Theory r Excess return R Real (rate) RE Real Estate REITs Real Estate Investment Trusts RWH Random Walk Hypothesis S Spot price, spot rate SBRP Survey-based Bond Risk Premium SDF Stochastic Discount Factor SMB Small Minus Big, size premium proxy SR Sharpe Ratio SWF Sovereign Wealth Fund TED Treasury–Eurodollar (deposit) rate spread in money markets TIPS Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, real bonds UIP Uncovered Interest Parity (hypothesis) VaR Value at Risk VC Venture Capital VIX A popular measure of the implied volatility of S&P 500 index options VMG Value Minus Growth, equity value premium proxy WDRA Wealth-Dependent Risk Aversion X Cash flow Y Yield YC Yield Curve (steepness), term spread YTM Yield To Maturity YTW Yield To Worst Disclaimer Antti Ilmanen is a Senior Portfolio Manager at Brevan Howard, one of Europe’s largest hedge fund managers.

It includes infrastructure, timber, and farmland; art and other collectibles (fine wines, rare coins, stamps); and more novel securities such as catastrophe bonds, carbon credits, intellectual property rights, viatical or life insurance settlements, longevity swaps, and others. If hedge funds can be characterized as an asset class, then the list of alternatives may be extended to include managed futures (typically momentum-oriented commodity-trading advisors or CTAs), global tactical asset allocation managers (typically value-oriented investors), active FX, volatility trading, alternative betas and hedge fund replication, as well as investments focused on corporate governance, sustainable development, and shareholder activism. Figure 11.1 shows the cumulative returns of the big-four alternatives since 1984.

The bias is milder for value-weighted averages because backfilling is more often done by small young funds. While many studies make adjustments for survivorship and backfill biases, few studies are able to quantify selection, liquidation, lookback, and lookahead biases. Box 11.4. CTA performance Commodity trading advisors (CTAs) or managed futures may be viewed either as a subset of HFs or as a distinct but close cousin. Unlike most HFs, CTAs tend to be systematic and focus on trend following (diversifying across a large number of liquid assets and both fast and slow models). Chapter 14 discusses simulated trend-following strategies.


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Hedge Fund Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager

asset-backed security, backtesting, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, Bernie Madoff, Black-Scholes formula, book value, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, buy the rumour, sell the news, Claude Shannon: information theory, clean tech, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, commodity trading advisor, computerized trading, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, delta neutral, diversification, diversified portfolio, do what you love, Edward Thorp, family office, financial independence, fixed income, Flash crash, global macro, hindsight bias, implied volatility, index fund, intangible asset, James Dyson, Jones Act, legacy carrier, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, money market fund, oil shock, pattern recognition, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Right to Buy, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, riskless arbitrage, Rubik’s Cube, Savings and loan crisis, Sharpe ratio, short selling, statistical arbitrage, Steve Jobs, systematic trading, technology bubble, transaction costs, value at risk, yield curve

He dropped out of college with a near-perfect GPA and only nine credits short of a degree to pursue a career in futures trading. Although it is a decision that seems bafflingly irrational to me, give credit to Ramsey for knowing exactly what he wanted to do, and as he says, “It turned out okay.” Ramsey trades the highly liquid futures and foreign exchange (FX) markets. Although the majority of Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) 1 use a systematic approach, Ramsey is strictly a discretionary trader. He also differs from most CTAs by incorporating fundamentals into his decisionmaking process. Ramsey begins by establishing a broad fundamental macro view that determines his directional bias in each market. Once this bias is established, he will seek to go short the weakest market in a sector if he is bearish or long the strongest market if he is bullish, using technical analysis to time trade entry and position adjustments.

This type of all-encompassing commitment to trading it is not necessarily recommended as a lifestyle, but rather is offered as an observation of one of the characteristics of trading success. For Ramsey, however, I suspect such commitment is not a burden, as trading is a passion, not a chore. 1The term Commodity Trading Advisor is the official designation for managers registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and members of the National Futures Association (NFA), and is a misnomer on at least two counts: (1) A CTA is a fund or account manager with direct investment responsibility and not an advisor as the name appears to suggest. (2) CTAs do not necessarily trade only commodities as the name implies.

After setting up a real-time quote system to manually day-trade the markets, he abandoned the process after only three days, as he quickly realized, This isn’t me. This just doesn’t work for me. 1Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) are managers who trade futures and are registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). This official nomenclature is poorly chosen on at least two grounds: Commodity Trading Advisors are managers, not advisors, and a large majority of the trading they engage in is in financial markets (e.g., stock indexes, interest rates, and currencies) rather than commodities. 2Management fees are collected on assets under management. Incentive fees are collected as a percent of profits earned above a high-water mark—the highest NAV level at which incentive fees were previously collected.


pages: 512 words: 162,977

New Market Wizards: Conversations With America's Top Traders by Jack D. Schwager

backtesting, beat the dealer, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Black-Scholes formula, book value, butterfly effect, buy and hold, commodity trading advisor, computerized trading, currency risk, Edward Thorp, Elliott wave, fixed income, full employment, implied volatility, interest rate swap, Louis Bachelier, margin call, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, money market fund, paper trading, pattern recognition, placebo effect, prediction markets, proprietary trading, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, risk tolerance, risk/return, Saturday Night Live, Sharpe ratio, the map is not the territory, transaction costs, uptick rule, War on Poverty

To answer this question, let’s pick up the scene six years later, when I am preparing to do this book. My first job is to research possible candidates to be interviewed. In the area of The Silence of the Turtles / 139 futures traders, one reference source I used was the quarterly summary provided by Managed Accounts Reports. This report summarizes the performance of a large number of commodity trading advisors (CTAs), providing a single synopsis sheet for each advisor. At the bottom of each sheet is a summary table with key statistics, such as average annual percentage return, largest drawdown, Sharpe ratio (a return/risk measure), percentage of winning months, and the probabilities of witnessing a 50 percent, 30 percent, and 20 percent loss with the given CTA.

Moreover, if you can discover such a system and exercise the discipline to follow it, you can succeed in the markets without being a born trader. Monroe Trout THE BEST RETURN THAT LOW RISK CAN BUY I first met Monroe Trout several years ago, when a broker in my firm, who was trying to land Trout’s account, brought him by as part of the company tour. I knew that Trout was a commodity trading advisor (CTA) new to the business, but I didn’t know much else. Subsequently, I often heard Trout’s name mentioned as one of the younger CTAs who was doing very well. I didn’t realize how well until I started to work on this book. In consulting the quarterly issue of Managed Accounts Reports while doing research for this book, I found that in terms of return/risk measurements, Trout’s performance was the best of the more than one hundred managers covered.

Although their trading methods are completely different—Trout is a directional trader, whereas Hull is an arbitrageur—their assessments of the key to successful trading are virtually identical: a combination of having an edge and using rigid money management controls. Al Weiss THE HUMAN CHART ENCYCLOPEDIA I n terms of return/risk ratio, Al Weiss may well have the single best long-term track record for a commodity trading advisor. Since he began trading in 1982 as AZF Commodity Management, Weiss has averaged 52 percent annually. One thousand dollars invested with Weiss in 1982 would have been worth almost $53,000 at the end of 1991. However, returns are only half the story. The truly impressive element in Weiss’s track record is that these high gains were achieved with extremely small equity drawdowns.


Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom by van K. Tharp

asset allocation, backtesting, book value, Bretton Woods, buy and hold, buy the rumour, sell the news, capital asset pricing model, commodity trading advisor, compound rate of return, computer age, distributed generation, diversification, dogs of the Dow, Elliott wave, high net worth, index fund, locking in a profit, margin call, market fundamentalism, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, passive income, prediction markets, price stability, proprietary trading, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Tax Reform Act of 1986, transaction costs

However, most beginning traders and investors with small amounts of money are constantly giving themselves similar expectations—expectations that they are unlikely to meet. DESIGNING OBJECTIVES: A MAJOR PART OF YOUR SYSTEM WORK I once worked with a man whose job was to give money to budding commodity trading advisors (CTAs). Part of his job was to assess the various systems that these CTAs had developed, and many people considered him to be one of the world’s experts in system development. One day I said to him, “If you could give any particular suggestion to traders who are trying to come up with a new system, what would it be?”

Chuck is a talented speaker, and he frequently gives talks at investment conferences. And he has been a guest speaker at many of our How to Develop a Winning Trading System That Fits You workshops. Chuck is now retired and lives near Sedona, Arizona. When he was an active trader, he was a commodity trading advisor (CTA), and later on he had his own hedge fund.4 You might wonder why I asked Chuck, who has such an extensive technical background, to write about fundamental analysis. Chuck used to lecture about fundamental analysis for a major university, and he also ran a discretionary fundamentally based trading system for Island View Financial Group.

Such concepts are probably excellent for people who feel that they must know how markets work before they can commit themselves to trade. NOTES 1. Expectancy will be discussed extensively in Chapter 7. It is one of the most important topics that you need to understand as a trader or investor. 2. The CFTC requires that commodity trading advisors include a statement in their advertisements and disclosure documents that says that past results do not reflect upon future results. 3. Tom Basso is now retired from trading and spends his time having fun. However, when he wrote this section, in 1996, he was an active money manager. He still can be reached by e-mail at tom@trendstat.com. 4.


pages: 261 words: 103,244

Economists and the Powerful by Norbert Haring, Norbert H. Ring, Niall Douglas

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, book value, British Empire, buy and hold, central bank independence, collective bargaining, commodity trading advisor, compensation consultant, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, diversified portfolio, financial deregulation, George Akerlof, illegal immigration, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Jean Tirole, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge worker, land bank, law of one price, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, mandatory minimum, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, means of production, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, Money creation, moral hazard, new economy, obamacare, old-boy network, open economy, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, pension reform, Ponzi scheme, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, Renaissance Technologies, Robert Solow, rolodex, Savings and loan crisis, Sergey Aleynikov, shareholder value, short selling, Steve Jobs, The Chicago School, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, ultimatum game, union organizing, Vilfredo Pareto, working-age population, World Values Survey

Phaliappou and Gottschalg (2009) and Phalippou (2009) have found that investors in private equity buyout on average receive a yield lower than that of the Standard & Poor’s 500, the most important stock market index for the US, after the high fees for these funds are subtracted. However, most investors are not aware of this. The fee structure is so opaque and contracts vary in so many crucial details that it is exceedingly hard to get a good idea of what investors are actually paying (Phalippou 2009). For another important subset of hedge funds, commodity trading advisors (CTAs), Bhardwaj, Gorton and Rouwenhorst (2008) have also examined the industry’s performance claims. They found them just as wanting as the claims of the private equity industry. According to their calculations, returns are five percentage points above those of Treasury bonds before fees, but barely higher after fees, which average 4 percent per year.

IZA Discussion Paper 1137. Bhaktavatsalam, Sree Vidya. 2008. Greenspan Helped Pimco Save Billions, Gross Says. Bloomberg, April 21. Bhardwaj, Geetesh, Gary B. Gorton and K. Geert Rouwenhorst. 2008. “Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: The Inefficient Performance and Persistence of Commodity Trading Advisors.” NBER Working Paper 14424. Bhaskar, V., Alan Manning and Ted To. 2002. “Oligopsony and Monopsonistic Competition in the Labor Markets.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 16: 155–74. Black, William. 2010. “Epidemics of ‘Control Fraud’ Lead to Recurrent, Intensifying Bubbles and Crises.” Paper presented at the Murphy Conference on Corporate Law, Fordham Law School, March 12.


Capital Ideas Evolving by Peter L. Bernstein

Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Andrei Shleifer, asset allocation, behavioural economics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bob Litterman, book value, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, capital asset pricing model, commodity trading advisor, computerized trading, creative destruction, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, diversification, diversified portfolio, endowment effect, equity premium, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, high net worth, hiring and firing, index fund, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Meriwether, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Bachelier, market bubble, mental accounting, money market fund, Myron Scholes, paper trading, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, price anchoring, price stability, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Shiller, seminal paper, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, survivorship bias, systematic trading, tail risk, technology bubble, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, yield curve, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

In part, we try to rely on negative feedback systems—we seek to buy when relative prices are too low and to sell when relative prices are too high—on the assumption that prices out of line will return to equilibrium levels. As you know from my papers, substitution is a powerful force in markets; that is, assets with similar risk characteristics will be priced to provide similar expected returns.” To illustrate this point, Scholes gave an actual example of a Platinum Grove transaction involving CTAs—Commodity Trading Advisors who trade in the futures markets and are registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In 2006, the Bank of Japan appeared close to ending its long-held practice of a continuously easing monetary policy and maintaining interest rates close to zero. Many CTAs saw this development as an opportunity to sell—to go short—futures contracts on Japanese bonds maturing ten years out.

See Market Carnegie Foundation, 201 Carter, Andrew, 200 Case, Karl, 82 CFA Institute, 213 Chicago Mercantile Exchange, 85 Clarke, Roger, 106 Cohn, Richard, 29 Commodity Futures Trading Commission, 119 Corzine, Jon, 216 Country A and B industry swap (Merton), 55–56, 84 bern_z04bindex.qxd 4/3/07 8:20 AM 268 Page 268 INDEX CREF portfolio, 200 –202 CTAs (Commodity Trading Advisors), 119–120 Damsma, Marvin alpha-beta separation strategies of, 184 –192, 193–194, 238 Amoco pension fund developed by, 182–183 Amoco portfolio strategies used by, 178 BP-Amoco f inancing strategies used by, 195 on new strategic partnership structure, 186 on value of separating beta and alpha returns, 175–176 Darwin, Charles, 62 “Dayenu” (Passover prayer), 212–213 Day trading, 56 Debreu, Gérard, 94 De Finetti, Bruno, 108–109 “De Finetti Scoops Markowitz” (Markowitz), 108 Dimson, Elroy, 188 Diversif ication CAPM on, 92–93 as control over volatility, 221 Markowitz’s key notion of, 92, 154, 155, 159, 210 risk management using, 154, 155, 159, 173 Samuelson’s support of, 42 Dividends Shiller and Jung’s study on ratio of price and, 74 –76 Shiller’s excess volatility applied to, 79–80 Dodd, David, 147 Dragon risks, 210, 211, 225 Dunn, Patricia, 137, 141–142 Earnings per share, investor fetish about, 41–42 Economics described, 3 Marshall’s inf luence on study of, 3–4 See also Finance theories Eff icient Market Hypothesis arbitrage assumption in, 25–28 implications of Behavioral Finance reality for, 13–14 informed manner of investment in, 19 Lo’s study of, 60 – 62 rational expectations similarities to, 67 Samuelson on alpha as vindication of, 40 Shiller’s micro-eff iciency studies and, 72–76 unworldly nature of, 48 Endogenous Economic Fluctuations: Studies in the Theory of Rational Beliefs ( Kurz), 71 Endogenous volatility, 72 Equilibrium Black-Litterman model on, 215, 216, 220, 224 –228, 244 Litterman’s description of, 215, 218 market eff iciency and role of, 220, 234 Equilibrium models, 100 Equity trading, change in patterns of, 63 ETFs (exchange-traded funds), 142 bern_z04bindex.qxd 4/3/07 8:20 AM Page 269 Index Excess volatility phenomenon, 68–71, 79–80 Exogenous volatility, 72 Failure of invariance Kahneman’s def inition of, 6–8 Thaler’s house money effect example of, 8, 14 Fama, Eugene on Behavioral Finance, 30 CAPM work by, 165–166, 171 eff icient market as def ined by, 79 eff icient market theory by, 69 on premium for holding stocks, 94 on relevant information, 80 Family balance sheets, 82–84 Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 76 Federal Reserve Regulation T, 105 Fidelity Research Institute, 22 Fidelity’s Magellan Fund (1977–1990), 20 50-50 choice experiment on decisions for, 9 TIAA-CREF use of, 9–10 Finance theories BGI strategies and role of, 143–145 Black on putting trust in, 94 Eff icient Market Hypothesis, 13–14, 25–28, 40, 48, 60 – 62, 67, 72–76 Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, 244 latest developments in, 237–238 Modern Portfolio Theory, 30, 154 neoclassical, 26, 56, 57, 100 options pricing theory, 238 Portfolio Selection theory, 100, 103, 105–108 risk management as heart of, 237 269 Sharpe on, 144 state-preference, 94 –96 theories of choice, 4 –8 See also Behavioral Finance; Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM); Capital Ideas; Economics Financial Analysts Journal, 24, 104, 196, 207 Financial Engines model, 97–98, 162 Financial market eff iciency Black-Litterman model based on, 220 Capital Ideas on, 220 drive toward ever-greater, 243–244 equilibrium role in, 220, 234 Fama’s def inition of, 79 Litterman’s position on, 219–223 Swensen on dilemmas of, 164 Financial markets Adaptive Markets Hypothesis notion of, 62– 64 as “dazzling creations,” xvi economic role played by, 113 Fama’s def inition of eff icient, 79 globalization of, 241–243 ineff iciency of, 28–30, 41 Shiller on creating macro, 86–87 Shiller on excess volatility phenomenon of, 68–71, 79–80 Shiller on micro-eff iciency of, 72–76 Shiller on REITs (real estate investment trusts), 84 –86 Swensen on dilemmas of eff icient, 164 transactions in the, 113–114 using simulations of, 101–104 See also Pricing bern_z04bindex.qxd 270 4/3/07 8:20 AM Page 270 INDEX Financial markets ineff iciency irrational pricing and, 28–30 macro, 41 memorable demonstrations of, 28–30 Fixed-income bond management, 200 Forecasting versus risk transfer, 123–124 Fortune’s ten most admired companies, 172 Foundation Trilogy, The (Asimov), 59 Fouse, Bill, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 146 Framing house money effect, 8, 14 retirement funds experiment on, 8–10 French, Kenneth, 165–166, 171 Fuller & Thaler investment strategies used at, 16–18 sector of choice by, 19 smaller-capitalizations taken by, 25 success of, 20 See also Thaler, Richard Fuller, Russell, 16 Functional and Structural Finance (Merton and Bodie), 50 Fundamental Law of Active Management, 138, 139, 140 Futures market, 119–120 The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money ( Keynes), 3 Global f inancial markets, 241–243 Global Investment Strategies, 216 Goldman Sachs active management approach by, 224 –228, 229, 233 alpha focus of, 229–232 Black’s move to, 214 –215 Litterman’s career at, 214 –215, 216–218 portfolio performance of, 216–217, 221–223, 230, 233–234 transaction cost management by, 223–224 volatility focus by, 218, 223 See also Black-Litterman model Gottlieb, Jason, 218–219 Gould, Jeffrey, 31 Goyal, Amit, 13 Graham & Dodd awards, 196 Graham, Benjamin, 147 Grantham, Jeremy, 221 Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo, 221 Grauer, Fred on BGI’s financial strategies, 140–141 on BGI’s personnel policies, 141–143 made WFIA CEO, 130 –131 Merrill Lynch experience by, 131 on Stagecoach Fund, 132–133 on WFIA low-cost index funds strategies, 134 –136 See also Wells Fargo Investment Advisors ( WFIA) “A Great Company Can Be a Great Investment” (Anderson and Smith), 172 Grinold, Richard, 137, 138, 139, 140 Gross, Bill alpha engine strategy used by, 185–186 BondsPLUS product developed by, 180 –182 separation of alpha-beta management by, 178, 238 See also StocksPLUS Grossman, Blake, 130, 131, 139, 144 –145, 147, 244 bern_z04bindex.qxd 4/3/07 8:20 AM Page 271 Index Grossman, Sanford, 32–33, 114 –115 GTAA (global tactical asset allocation), 216 Hamilton, Booz Allen, 171 Harlow-Brown paradigm, 22–23 Harlow, W.


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Living in a Material World: The Commodity Connection by Kevin Morrison

addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, commoditize, commodity trading advisor, computerized trading, diversified portfolio, Doha Development Round, Elon Musk, energy security, European colonialism, flex fuel, food miles, Ford Model T, Great Grain Robbery, Gregor Mendel, Hernando de Soto, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, hydrogen economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), junk bonds, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Michael Milken, new economy, North Sea oil, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, planned obsolescence, price mechanism, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, young professional

Donchian is credited 238 | LIVING IN A MATERIAL WORLD with creating a marketing trading tactic known as ‘trend following,’ which is essentially based on the assumption that commodity prices move in long, sustained patterns. It’s a strategy adopted by programmed managed futures funds, otherwise known as Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs), of which there are now thousands. The CTA is a misnomer; they do not now necessarily invest in commodities but in all classes of futures, including currencies, fixed interest and stock indices. The term harks back to the era prior to the launch of financial futures in the 1970s, and to the period when the only futures were commodities.

., J. 254 arsenic 205 Artists’ Project Earth173 n. 28 Asian currency crisis 7 Asian Development Bank 9 World Outlook 2007 9 Associated British Foods 147 Atlantic Richfield 226 n. 43 Aykroyd, Dan 256 Azuriz 164, 165 Babcock, Bruce 56, 57 Bacon, Louis 237, 238 Ballard 193 Baltic Exchange 212, 213 Bath, Henry 226 n. 41 Battery Ventures 266, 267 Bell, Alexander Graham 73 Belmans, Professor Ronald 194 Benton, Oren 42 Berzelius, Jons Jakob 43 Bettelheim, Eric 146, 148 BHP Billiton 13, 200, 205, 211 biodiversity 155–7 BioEnergy 81 292 | INDEX biofuels 11, 38, 44, 55–60, 69, 71–3, 95, 116–18 see also corn Biofuels Security Act (US) 80 biomass 35–6 Birol, Faith 26 Blackstone 266, 267 Blair, Tony 39, 142 Blenheim Capital Management 237 Bolger, Jim 59 Boulle, Jean-Raymond 199 BP 57, 79, 226 n. 43, 261 Brazil sugarcane production 90–4 Brent 138 Brin, Sergey 38 British Transport Police (BTP) 182 Bronks, Richard (Dick) 259, 260 bronze 180–1 Brown, Robert 55, 56 Browne, Sir John 261 Bryce, Colin 259, 260 Bubeck, David 107 Bükk National Park 145 Bunge 89, 234 Bush, George H. 27 Bush, George W. 28, 29, 30, 31, 55, 71, 75, 79, 116, 129, 142, 143, 192 Butter and Cheese Exchange of New York 251 Butter, Cheese, and Egg Exchange of New York 251 Butz, Earl 115 California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calipers) 244 California Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) mandate 54 Canadian oil sands 49–50 cap-and-trade systems 138–40, 143, 172 n. 23 carbon capture and storage (CCS) 152–3 Carbon Capture and Storage Association, The 176 n. 50 carbon credits 154 carbon dioxide 25–6, 27, 129, 131–2, 170 n. 8, 170 n. 9, 170 n. 10 trading 137, 138–9, 140, 144 carbon economy 145–7 carbon emissions 128–9 carbon footprint 126, 128 carbon market 137–8 carbon pricing 3, 11, 29 carbon sequestration 31, 135, 150 carbon sinks 152–3 CarbonNeutral Company, The 144 Cargill 89, 234 Carnegie, Andrew 215 Carter, President Jimmy 30, 73, 116 Caruso, Guy 38, 53 Carver, George Washington 102, 120 n. 14 Case of Deferred Mitigation (CDM) 151–2, 175 n. 46 Cashman, Eugene 231, 233, 234, 270 Castro, Fidel 92, 219 cattle 87–8 Caxton Associates 237 cellulosic ethanol 56–7 Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) 151, 152 Charles, Prince of Wales 147 Chavez, Hugo 45 Chemurgic Council 95 Chernobyl disaster 40 Chevron 261 ChevronTexaco 79 Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) 99–100, 139, 146, 232–3, 234, 236, 246, 247, 248, 249, 253, 255, 257, 266, 269, 270 Chicago Climate Exchange 143, 146, 154, 155 Chicago Mercantile Exchange 245, 246, 248, 249, 256, 264, 267, 269 chicken 84–7 Chile copper production 195–8, 199, 203–10 nitrates 198–9 Chile Copper Company 197 China car market 18–19, 61 n. 2 coal 20–1, 24 demand for metals 12 electricity 19–20, 187–8 energy consumption 25, 61 n. 5 Forbidden City 17–18 lifestyle 17–18 meat consumption 83–4 migration 6–7, 19 nickel 218 pollution 25 population 6–7, 19 standard of living 6 supermarkets in 89 China Institute of Financial Derivatives 249 INDEX Chinatown 162 Chiquita Brands International 239 chlorodifluoromethane (HCFC-22) 152 Cisco Systems 263 Citigroup 242 Clean Air Act (US) 1990 74 Amendments 139 Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) 172 n. 23 clean coal technology 31–3 Clean Water Act 1970 (US) 156 Climate Care 144 Climate Change Registrar 174 n. 35 climate change cost of 134–5 history 127–8 Climate Exchange Plc 146 Clinton, President Bill 80 Clinton, Hillary 80, 116, 143 CME Group 165, 232 co2balance.com 144 Coady Diemar Partners 141 Coady, Pat 141 coal 10–11, 20–3, 24, 25–6, 26–9, 131 China 20–1, 24 clean technology 31–3 liquid 33–4 pollution controls 27–9 UK 22–3 US 20–1 Coalition of Rainforest Nations 151 Coase, Ronald 138 Codelco 10, 203, 207, 213 Cohen, gary 259, 262 Coldplay 145 Collins, Keith 117 Coltrane, John 183 Columbus, Christopher 97, 225 n. 40 Comex 213, 253, 256, 268 Commodities Corp 247 Commodities Corporation 238, 239 Commodities Futures Trading Commission 245 Commodity Exchange Act 1936 (US) 245 Commodity Exchange Inc. (Comex) 255 Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC) (US) 74, 253, 263 commodity indices 240–2 commodity market manipulation 245–7 Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) 238 Congo, copper in 201, 202, 210–11 | 293 Connaughton, James 29, 31 ConocoPhilips 57, 79 Conservation International 93 Continental Power Exchange (CPE) 257, 258 Cooke, Jay 198, 222 n. 18 copper 4, 9, 11 applications 187–90 Congo 201, 202, 210–11 cost 211–13, 214–17 demand 182–5 electrical applications 186–7 in electricity generation 194–5 history 185–6 prices 199–201, 222 n. 17 production 195–8, 199 recycling 183, 184–5 theft 179–82 trade 211–13 under-sea extraction 217 in vehicles 190–4 Copper Export Association 201 Copper Exporters Incorporated 201 Copper Producers’ Association 200 coralconnect.com 260 corn 68–84, 96–8, 98–9, 99–101 hybrids 101–3 GM 104–6 diversity 106–10 Corn Products 233 cotton 166 Countryside Alliance 146 credit crisis (2007) 7 Crocker, Thomas 138 Cruse, Richard 111 D1 Oils 57, 58, 59 Dabhol gas-fired power plant 35 Dales, John 138 Daly, Herman 136 Darwin, Charles 67 Davis, Adam 157 Davis, Miles 183 Day after Tomorrow, The 15 n. 1 De Angelis, Anthony ‘Tino’ 245 De Beers 200, 210 De Soto, Hernando 136 Deere, John 100 deforestation 87, 147 Dennis, Richard 237 Deripaska, Oleg 199 Deutsche Bank 246, 261 294 | INDEX Diamond, Jared 97 DiCaprio, Leonardo 130 Dimas, Stavros 160 distillers’ dried grains with solubles (DDGS) 81 Dittar, Thomas 231 Donchian, Richard 237–8 Donson, Harry 199 dot.com bubble 7, 14, 241, 243 Doud, Gregg 82, 83 Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index 240 Dresdner Kleinwort 47 Drexel Burnham Lambert 254 Dreyfus, Louis 89 Duke Energy 258 Dunavant, Billy 237 DuPont 102 E85 79 Ealet, Isabelle 259, 260 Earth Sanctuatires 157 Earth Summit Bali 142 Rio 1992 141 Ebay 38 Ecosystem Marketplace 157 Edison, Thomas 17, 95, 186 Ehrlich, Paul 13, 14, 16 n. 9 Population Bomb, The 14 Eisenhower, President 40 El Paso 258 Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) 153 electric vehicles 54, 191–3 11th Hour, The 130 Elf 261 Elton, Ben 135 Emissions Trading Program 139 Energy Information Administration (EIA) 38 Energy Policy Act 2005 (US) 28 energy security 28–9 Energy Security Act 1980 (US) 74 Enron 35, 164, 165, 213, 246, 257–64 Enron Online 213, 225 n. 40, 257, 258, 259 Environmental Protection Agency (US) 27, 62 n. 17, 75, 139 ethanol 69–70, 73–81, 92, 119 n. 6 see also biofuels Eurex 262 European Climate Exchange 146 European Union 142, 158, 160 Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) 185 Evelyn, John 127 exchange-traded funds (ETFs) 13, 270 Exxon 32, 50, 52, 261 ExxonMobil 13, 79, 242, 254 Faraday, Michael 186 Farm Credit Administration 76 farm debt crisis 114–15 farm payments 115–16 farm sinks 154–5 Fearnley-Whittingstall 86 Federal Bureau of Investigation 246 Federal Clean Water Act (US) 156 F-gases 131 Firewire 260 Fisher, Mark 266, 269 Fleming, Roddy 219 flex-fuel cars 92–3 Fonda, Jane 114 Food and Agricultural Organization 148, 159 Ford, Bill 267 Ford, President Gerald 30, 115 Ford, Henry 73, 95, 195 Fordlandia 195 forest economics 149–50 forestry carbon credits 147 forests 147–51 Forrest, Andrew 199 Forward Contracts (Regulations) Act 1952 (US) 249 Forward Markets Commission (FMC) 249 Four Winds Capital Management 149, 159, 184 Franklin, Benjamin 157 Freese, Barbara 27 Friedland, Robert 199 Frost Fairs 127 fuel cell vehicles 53, 192–3 Futures Inc. 237 futures trading 235–6, 245, 247–50 gas 21–2 Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) 61 n. 8 gasohol 73 gene shuffling 105 General Atlantic 267, 269 General Motors 53, 54, 191, 193 INDEX genetically modified organism (GMO) seeds 105–6 Glencore 199, 211 Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005 148 Global Initiatives173 n. 28 Global Positioning Systems (GPS) 191 global warming 24–6, 75 Globex 267 glycerin 82 Golder and Associates 206 Goldman 255, 260, 261 Goldman Sachs 57, 146, 254, 259 Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI) 240, 241 Goldstein Samuelson 245 Google 37, 38 Gore, Al 16 n. 5, 28, 38, 126, 129, 143 Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) certificates 146 Grant, President Ulysses S. 214 Greenburg, Marty 269 greenhouse effect 131 greenhouse gas emissions 25, 131 see also carbon dioxide; nitrous oxide Greenspan, Alan 244 Gresham Investment Management 242, 243 Guggenheim brothers 197 Guttman, Lou 251, 255, 259 Hamanaka, Yasuo 246 Hanbury-Tension, Robin 146 Harding, President Warren 103 hedge funds 23640 Henry Moore Foundation 180, 181 Herfindahl, Orris 215, 226 n. 46 Heston, Charlton 15, n. 4 Hezbollah 46 Hi-Bred Corn Company 102 high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) 89–90 Highland Star 219 Hill, James Jerome 215 Homestead Act 1862 (US) 100 Honda 53 Howard, John 133, 171 n. 16 Hu Jintao, President 219 Hub, Henry 257 Humphries, Jon 181 Hunt Brothers 245 Hunter, Brian 246, 247 | 295 Hurricane Katrina 135 Hurricane Rita 134 Hussein, Saddam 48 hybrid cars 53 hydroelectric power 34 hydrogen cars 54 hypoxia zone 111 iAqua 165 IEA 32 IMF 16 n. 6 Inconvenient Truth, An 16 n. 5, 129 Indonesia palm oil 93–4 Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) 31–2 intelligent lighting 38 IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) 246, 261, 262, 265, 266, 267 Intergovernmental Council of Copper Exporting Countries (CIPEC) 203, 204 International Bauxite Association (IBA) 203 International Carbon Action Partnership (ICAP) 144 International Commercial Exchange (ICE) 273 n. 15 International Copper Cartel 201 International Energy Agency (IEA) 19, 25, 26, 40, 140–1, 153, 194 International Monetary Fund 57 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (UN) 24, 132, 134, 147, 149, 170 n. 3 International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) 250, 256, 257, 262, 263, 264, 265 International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) 41 International Tin Council 203 International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture 107 Iowa Farm Bureau 36, 76, 155 Iowa Stored Energy Park 36 Japanese car market 18 Jardine Matheson 225 n. 40 Jarecki, Dr Henry 242, 243, 244 jatropha 57–9 Jefferson, Thomas 109 Jevons, William Stanley 20 Joint, Charles 181 296 | INDEX Joint Implementation (JI) 151 Jones, Paul Tudor 237, 238 Kabila, Joseph 210 Kanza, T.R. 211 Katanga of Congo 201, 225 n. 37 Kennecott Copper 199 Kennedy, Joseph (Joe) 264 Khosla Partners 38 Khosla, Vinod 37 Kitchen, Louise 258 Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers 37 Kooyker, Willem 237, 238 Kovner, Bruce 237, 238 Krull, Pete 81 Kyoto Protocol 24, 27, 50, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147, 151, 169 n. 2, 194 clean development mechanism (CDM) 151 Lamkey, Kendall 112 Land and Water Resources, Inc. 155 Land Grant College Act (US) 101 Lange, Jessica 114 lead credits 172 n. 20 LED (light-emitting diodes) 38 Lehman brothers 241 Leiter, Joseph 245 Leopold II, King 210 Liebreich, Michael 39 Liffe 267 Lincoln, President Abraham 69, 100, 101, 119 n. 1 Lintner, Dr John 243 liquid coal 33–4 London Clearing House 263 London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (Liffe) 262 London Metal Exchange (LME) 16 n. 10, 43, 196, 204, 212, 213, 246 Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) 247 Louisiana Light Sweet 253 Lourey, Richard 166, 168 Lovelock, James 131 Lyme Timber Company, The 149 Mackintosh, John 232, 234, 270 Madonna 6 malaria 156 Malthus, Thomas 130 manure lagoons 154–5 Mao, Chairman 210 Markowitz, Harry 243 Marks, Jan 268 Marks, Michel 252, 253, 254, 268 Marks, Rebecca 164, 165 Mars, Forrest E., Jr 60 Matheson, Hugh 225 n. 40 Matif 262 McCain, John 80 McDonalds 89 Megatons to Megawatts programme 42 Melamed, Leo 249–50, 264 Mendel, Gregor (Johann) 102, 122 n. 30 Merrill Lynch 241, 246 Mesa Water 163–4 methane 128, 131, 152, 154 methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) 74 Microsoft 13 Midwestern Regional Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord 143 milk 88–9 Milken, Michael 254 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board 156 Mittal, Laskma 212 Mobile 261 Mocatta Metals 242 Monsanto 106, 108 Montéon, Michael 199 Montgomery, David 138 Moor Capital 237 Moore, Henry 179, 182 Morgan, J.P. 246 Morgan Stanley 254, 255, 259, 260, 261 Muir, John 125 Mulholland, William 162 Murphy, Eddie 256 Murray Darling Basin 165–6 Musk, Elon 38 Nabisco 238–9 Nanosolar 38 Nasdaq 262 Nassar, President 210 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 192 National Alcohol Programme (Brazil) 92 National Cattlemen’s Beef Association 82 National Commission on Supplies and Shortages (US) 7, 16 n. 5 National Corn Growers’ Association 80 National Energy Policy (US) 28 INDEX National Petroleum Council (NPC) 30, 50 National Security Space Office (NSSO) (US) 39 NCDEX 248, 249 Nelson, Willie 115 New Deal Farm Laws 103 New Deal for Agriculture 76, 89 New Energy Finance 39 New Farm and Forest Products Task Force 95 New York Board of Trade 240, 255 New York Cocoa Exchange 255 New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange 255 New York Cotton Exchange 237, 252, 255 New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) 43, 156, 246, 248, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269 New York Metal Exchange 226 n. 42 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) 198, 253, 255, 256, 264, 268, 270 Newman, Paul 265 Nicholson, Jack 162 nickel 217–18, 227 n. 50, 227 n. 52 nitrates 110–11 nitrogen oxide emissions 139 nitrous oxide 131, 139, 140, 152 Nixon, President 27, 30, 115, 231, 252 Noble Group 199 North, John Thomas 198, 199, 209 Norton, Gale 163 nuclear energy 34 nuclear power 21, 39–44 Nuexco Trading Corporation 42 Nybot 255, 256, 265 Obama, Barack 79, 80, 143 obesity 121 n. 19 O’Connor, Edmund 231 O’Connor, William 231 OECD 158, 159 oil 44–53 energy content 51–2 palm 93 prices 8–9, 10, 52–3 sands 49–50 shale 50–1, 64 n. 33 shocks 5, 7 soya 82 trading 250–5, 266 Oliver, Jamie 86 onion futures trading 245 | 297 Ontario Teachers’ Fund 244, 272 n. 8 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) 4, 9, 10, 22, 44–7, 203, 204, 251, 254 over-the-counter (OTC) trading 16 n. 8, 254–5 Owens Valley rape (1908) 162 Pachauri, Dr Rajendra K. 59 Page, Larry 38 Paley Commission 8 palm oil 93 Palmer, Fred 62 n. 14 Parthenon Capital 156, 267 PayPal 38 Peadon, Brian 165 perfluorocarbon 131 PGGM 244 Phaunos Timber Fund 149 Phelps Dodge 199 Phibro 254 Pickens, T.


pages: 367 words: 110,161

The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All by Mary Childs

Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, break the buck, buy and hold, Carl Icahn, collateralized debt obligation, commodity trading advisor, coronavirus, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency peg, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Thorp, financial innovation, fixed income, global macro, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, index card, index fund, interest rate swap, junk bonds, Kevin Roose, low interest rates, Marc Andreessen, Minsky moment, money market fund, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, NetJets, Northern Rock, off-the-grid, pneumatic tube, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, quantitative easing, Robert Shiller, Savings and loan crisis, skunkworks, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Steve Jobs, stocks for the long run, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, Vanguard fund, yield curve

The trade obviously required the use of futures, for which the Department of Labor had recently cleared the way in pension funds in late 1982, and most clients hadn’t approved them yet. To pitch clients on using them, Pimco had to register as a “commodity trading advisor.” So, all its investment professionals had to pass an exam, and then they had to go get client buy-in. “We flew in a guy from Chicago that did Chicago Board of Trade classes,” Muzzy says, “and we spent a weekend, just a really concentrated, intensive weekend,” of all the investment professionals taking the class. Then they all took a test. If they passed, they would become “CTAs,” commodity trading advisors, certified futures traders. Given Pimco’s rabid competitiveness, “it wasn’t a question of passing, but what score did you get?”


pages: 819 words: 181,185

Derivatives Markets by David Goldenberg

Black-Scholes formula, Brownian motion, capital asset pricing model, commodity trading advisor, compound rate of return, conceptual framework, correlation coefficient, Credit Default Swap, discounted cash flows, discrete time, diversification, diversified portfolio, en.wikipedia.org, financial engineering, financial innovation, fudge factor, implied volatility, incomplete markets, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, law of one price, locking in a profit, London Interbank Offered Rate, Louis Bachelier, margin call, market microstructure, martingale, Myron Scholes, Norbert Wiener, Paul Samuelson, price mechanism, random walk, reserve currency, risk free rate, risk/return, riskless arbitrage, Sharpe ratio, short selling, stochastic process, stochastic volatility, time value of money, transaction costs, volatility smile, Wiener process, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

A commodity pool does just that; it pools the funds of a number of persons for trading futures contracts, or possibly to invest in another commodity pool. A commodity pool is like a mutual fund in its pooling function. By pooling funds, a commodity pool or mutual fund provides access to investors that they would otherwise not have on their own. For those who want advice, there are also Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) who are individuals or organizations which, for compensation or profit, advise others, directly or indirectly, as to the value of or the advisability of buying or selling futures contracts. Providing advice indirectly includes exercising trading authority over a customer’s account as well as giving advice through written publications or other media.

INDEX adjusted intrinsic value (AIV) 381, 396–7, 406; for European call, definition of 375–6 adjusted time premium (ATP) 396, 397 All-or-None (AON) orders 214, 215 American options 328 annualized dividend yields 88 anticipatory selling 339 anticipatory buying 339–40 arbitrage: arbitrage definitions 100–2; arbitrage opportunities 75, 77–8, 100–1, 103, 167, 172, 188, 192, 208, 260, 292, 450, 474; pricing by 464; risk-free arbitrage 100, 373; risky arbitrage 100–1 arithmetic Brownian motion (ABM) model of prices: equivalent martingale measures (EMMs) 530–1; option pricing in continuous time 540–1 back stub period 294 backwardation, contango and 198–9 Bank of International Settlements (BIS) 246 basic American call (put) option pricing model 332–4 basic European option pricing model, interpretation of 397–8 basic (naked) strategies 347–63 basis risk 223, 237, 238; cross hedging and 244; spot price risk and 178–82 bid-asked spread, trading within 133–4 bid prices 127, 134, 136, 161, 336 binomial option pricing model (BOPM) 436–48, 467–8, 475–6, 485–506; arbitrage, pricing by 464; binomial process (any N) 439; binomial process (N=1) 448; combination function C(N,j) 443–4; concept checks: algorithm for determination of B, verification of 485; binomial completeness, rule of thumb on 449; binomial model, time modeling in 438; calculation of combination function C(N,j) 444; hedge ratio interpretation 482; hedging a European call option in BOPM (N=2) 477; solution to 505; option price behavior (N=2) 477; solution to 505–6; path 2 contribution analysis 496; path 3 contribution analysis solution to 506; path structures of binomial process, working with 442; solution to 472; price paths for N-period binomial model 442; solution to 471–2; pricing terminal options 446; underlying stock price uncertainty modeling 438–40; valuation of option (time=0) using RNVR 490; verification of numerical example (N=2) numbers 489; verification of option values (N=2) in comparison with replicating portfolio method 493; European call option valuation at expiration 446; exercises for learning development of 501–5; fundamental theorem of asset pricing (FTAP2) 490; hedging a European call option (N=2) 477–85; implementation (N=2) 485–90; joint probability of given path 444; key concepts 501; logic of BOPM (N=1) and its drivers 463; multi-period model (N >1), path integral approach 493–500; numerical example (N=2) 487–90; option price behavior (N=2) 476; option valuation for 445–8; path structure of binomial process 440–2, 442–4; paths, thinking of BOPM in terms of 493–9; price paths, total number of 440–2; price paths ending at specific terminal price, total number of 442–4; pricing option at expiration 445–6; pricing option currently (time t=0) 446–8; proof that the BOPM (N=1) is complete, three parts of 517; proof of model for general N 499–500; replication, no-arbitrage and 464; risk-neutral valuation, exogenous variables and 615; risk-neutral valuation relationship: derivation as 467–8; interpretation of 468; as risk-neutral valuation relationship (RNVR) formula (N > 1) 490–3; as set of BOPMs (N=1) 491; stock price behavior (N=2) 475–6; stock price evolution: for binomial process (N=2) 440; for N-period binomial process, summary of 444–5; stock price tree (N=2) 488; stock price uncertainty 439; time in discrete time framework, modeling of 437–8; trinomial model (three stock outcomes) 464 Black-Scholes option pricing model: option pricing in continuous time 566–85, 588–9; from Bachelier 571–83; historical volatility estimator method 583–4; implied volatility estimator method 585; importance of 588–9; parsimony of 588; potential for 589; reduction of GBM to ABM with drift 567–70; risk-neutral transition density functions, generation of unknown from knowns 570–1; volatility estimation in Black-Scholes model 583–5; risk-neutral valuation, contribution to 598, 601; valuation of forward contracts in continuous time (assets with a dividend yield) 88 block trade eligibility 214, 228 block trade minimum 214, 228 Bond Equation 552, 554–5 boundaries, absorption of 541 Brownian motion paths, non-smoothness of 560; see also arithmetic Brownian motion (ABM); geometric Brownian motion (GBM) Buffett, Warren 252 buyers and sellers, matching of 125, 126–7 buying back stock 339 buying forward 7–8 calendar spreads 199 ‘calling away’ of stock 422 capital asset pricing model (CAPM) 447, 605 capital gains: effect on stock prices 98–9; capital gains process 98–9, 111 carrying charge hedging 188–93; convergence, implications for 189; equilibrium (no-arbitrage) in full carrying charge market 190–3; overall profits on 189 cash and carry transactions 5 cash commodity prices 35 cash flows: for annual rate swap 302; in non-intermediated swaps 282–4 cash settlement vs. commodity settlement 157; implications from problem of 157 CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange) 324–5, 334; asked price entries 335, 336; bid entries 335, 336; equity option specifications 343; exchange-traded option contracts 325; last sale entries 335, 336; Merck call options and price quotes 334–7; mini equity option specifications 344; net entries 335, 336; open interest entries 335, 336; volume entries 335, 336 certainty equivalent (CE): certainty equivalent cash flow 397; risk-neutral valuation and 603, 604 Clearing Houses: counterparty risk 140; futures exchange and 140; guarantor of trades 140; intermediation by 14–15; membership 140; operations and functions 139–53 clearing of trades 126; process of, offsetting futures trades and 141–4 close of market 145 clustering (persistence), volatility and 585 combination function C(N,j) 443–4 combinations of positions 50 combining charts to see profits from hedged positions 54–5 commentary on financial futures contracts price quotes 216–17 commitment prices 41 commitment to buy 67 commodities, ways to buy and sell 5 commodity forward contracts: paying fixed and receiving floating in 276; as single period swaps 275–6 Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) 123, 124, 125, 140, 215, 229 Commodity Pool Operators (CPOs) 123 Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) 123 complete markets 449 complete risk-expected return analysis of riskless hedge (BOPM, N=1) 607–18; direct calculation of ?c 612–15; direct calculation of ?s 611–12; expected return of hedge portfolio 616–18; hedge portfolio, percentage returns for 616–18; perfect positive correlation, statistics result for 609–11; volatility of hedge portfolio 608–11 concept checks: binomial option pricing model (BOPM): algorithm for determination of B, verification of 485; binomial completeness, rule of thumb on 449; binomial model, time modeling in 438; calculation of combination function C(N,j) 444; hedge ratio interpretation 482; hedging a European call option in BOPM (N=2) 477; option price behavior (N=2) 477; solution to 505–6; path 2 contribution analysis 496; path 3 contribution analysis: solution to 506; path structure of binomial process, working with 442; solution to 472; price paths for N-period binomial model 442; solution to 471–2; pricing terminal options 446; underlying stock price uncertainty modeling 438; valuation of option (time=0) using RNVR 490; verification of numerical example (N=2) numbers 489; verification of option values (N=2) in comparison with replicating portfolio method 493; equivalent martingale measures (EMMs): contingent claim pricing, working with 514; martingale condition, calculation of 525; option pricing, working with 514; two period investment strategy under EMM, proof for (t=0) 521; solution to 538; financial futures contracts: backwardation and contango, markets in 224; bank borrowing in spot Eurodollar (ED) market 250; ‘buying’ and ‘selling’ Eurodollar (ED) futures 256; calculation of adjusted hedge ratios 245; solution to 269; calculation of optimal (risk-minimizing) hedge ratio 240; cash settlement and effective price on S&P 500 spot index units 234; solution to 269; exchange rate risk, currency positions and 218; solution to 268; foreign exchange (FX) risk and jet fuel market 219; solution to 268–9; underlying spot 3-month Eurodollar (ED) time deposit 261; solution to 270; forward market contracting: controlling for counterparty risk 12–13; exploration of forward rates in long-term mortgage market 9–10; exploration of spot rates in long-term mortgage market 11; solution to 29; intermediation by Clearing House 15–16; solution to 29–30; spot markets, dealing with price quotes in 6–7; futures market contracting: price quotes in futures markets 19; hedging a European call option in BOPM (N=2): value confirmation 485; hedging with forward contracts: charting payoff to long forward position 39; solution to 62; charting payoff to short forward position 42; solution to 62; charting profits to fully unhedged position 45; solution to 63; charting profits to long spot position sold forward 49; payoff per share to long forward position 39; solution to 61; payoff per share to short forward position 42; profits to fully naked (unhedged) short forward position 50; solution to 64; profits to long spot position sold forward 48–9; profits to naked long spot position 45; wheat price volatility, dealing with 36; hedging with futures contracts: bond equivalent yield (BEY) of actual T-bill 167; solution to 207–8; construction of risk-free arb if r > 0 with no dividends 173; solution to 208; effect of narrowing basis in traditional short hedge 178; solution to 208–9; effect of widening basis in traditional short hedge 176; failure of traditional hedging 184; solution to 209; profits in traditional short hedge and the basis 172; verification that arb is arb without non-interest carrying charges and is riskless 192–3; solution to 209; verification of no current cost in arb 190; verification of riskless arb 191; interest-rate swaps: calculation of implied forward rates (IFRs) 310; solution to 319; graphical representation of swap’s cash flows 283; solution to 318; paying fixed in an interest rate derivative (IRD) 279; solution to 317–18; receiving variable in an interest rate derivative (IRD) 280; strip of forward contracts, short’s position in 278; solution to 317; swapping fixed for floating payments 276; solution to 317; market organization for futures contracts: Globex LOB trading, practicalities in 135–6; solution to 160–1; limit order execution 132; market order with protection, processing with CME Globex 128–9; solution to 160; market price best bids below sell market orders with and without protection, results?

298–9 intermediate settlement prices 154 intermediation 13–14, 14–15 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 246 intrinsic value 326, 330, 333, 337 Introducing Broker (IB) 123 investor’s accounts, tracking equity in 151–3 invoice price on delivery 153–6 Itô’s Lemma 562–6 joint probability of given path 444 JPY/USD futures 213–15 key concepts: binomial option pricing model (BOPM) 501; equivalent martingale measures (EMMs) 537; financial futures contracts 265–6; hedging with forward contracts 56; hedging with futures contracts 204; interest-rate swaps 315; market organization for futures contracts 158; model-based option pricing (MBOP) 466; option pricing in continuous time 590; option trading strategies 364, 431; options markets 341; rational option pricing (ROP) 408–9; risk-neutral valuation 634; spot, forward, and futures contracting 27; valuation of forward contracts (assets with dividend yield) 116; valuation of forward contracts (assets without dividend yield) 83 last trade date/time view calendar 214, 228 law of one price (LOP): model-based option pricing (MBOP) 452; risk-neutral valuation 597; valuation of forward contracts (assets without dividend yield) 77 LBAC (lower bound for American call option on underlying, no dividends) 374–5 LBACD (lower bound for American call option on underlying, continuous dividends) 383–5; call on underlier with continuous, proportional dividends over life of option 384–5; call on underlier with no dividends over life of option 384 LBAP (lower bound for American put option on underlying, no dividends) 378–80; intrinsic value lower bound for American put, example of 379–80 LBAPD (lower bound for American put option on underlying, continuous dividends) 387–8 LBEC (lower bound for European call option on underlying, no dividends) 375–8; implications of 377–8 LBECD (lower bound for European call option on underlying, continuous dividends) 382–3 LBEP (lower bound for European put option on underlying, no dividends) 380–1; adjusted intrinsic value (AIV) for European put, definition of 380–1 LBEPD (lower bound for European put option on underlying, continuous dividends) 386–7 learning about options, framework for 326–7 leverage, options and 327 LIBID (London Interbank Bid Rate) 249–50, 252 LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) 249, 250–4, 262, 263–4; Federal Funds (FF) vs. 251–2; interest-rate swaps 274–5, 278, 282, 293, 297, 303, 304, 306, 307, 309–10, 311–13; yield curve (spot rates) 304 Limit Bid (LBid) 129 Limit Offer (LOff) 129 limit order book (LOB) 130–1; depth in 131–4; Globex LOB trading, practicalities in 135–6 limit orders 129–30 liquidity: enablement of 16; financial futures contracts and 220, 222, 231, 237, 252, 258; liquidity options 333 lock-in characteristics 220, 233 locked-in prices 12 Log Bond equation: option pricing in continuous time 552–3; valuation of forward contracts (assets with dividend yield) 96 long a European call option on the underlying 351–5; economic characteristics 353 long a European put option on the underlying 348, 357–9; economic characteristics 358 long a zero-coupon riskless bond and hold to maturity 348, 360–2; economic characteristic 361 long and short positions, identification of 339–40 long call positions, difference between long underlying positions and 354 long forward positions, payoff to 37–9 long positions in options markets 339–40 long spot and long forward positions, difference between payoffs to 76–7 long the underlying 347–9; economic characteristics 349 long vs. short positions: hedging with futures contracts 164; options markets 339–40 Lufthansa 217–20 mapping out prices, spot, forward, and futures contracting 20–6 margin calls 145, 147–8, 152 marginal carrying charges 188 marginal rate of substitution (MRS) 604, 605 margins (performance bonds) 144–5, 148; initial margin 145; maintenance margin 145 market completeness 598 market levels 11 market orders 127–9 market organization for futures contracts 121–61; bid-asked spread, trading within 133–4; bid prices 127; buyers and sellers, matching of 125, 126–7; cash settlement vs. commodity settlement 157; implications from problem of 157; Clearing Houses: counterparty risk 140; futures exchange and 140; guarantor of trades 140; membership 140; operations and functions 139–53; clearing of trades 126; clearing process, offsetting futures trades and 141–4; close of market 145; Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) 123, 124, 125, 140, 215, 229; Commodity Pool Operators (CPOs) 123; Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) 123; concept checks: Globex LOB trading, practicalities in 135–6; solution to 160–1; limit order execution 132; market order with protection, processing with CME Globex 128–9; solution to 160; market price best bids below sell market orders with and without protection, results? 130; solution to 160; trading crude oil futures 147; solution to 161; convergence, forcing of 157; daily settlement process 144–51, 153; demutualization 139–40; depth in limit order book (LOB) 131–4; effective price and invoice price on delivery 153–6; equity in customer’s account 145, 148; exchange membership 139–40; exercises for learning development of 158–9; floor-brokers 140; floor-traders 140; Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) 122, 123, 124, 125, 137, 140; futures contracts: ‘buying’ and ‘selling’ of 126–7; daily value of 146; differences between forward contracts and 122; futures price and 127; market participants 122–5; futures trading: cash flow implications of 144; daily settlement, perspectives on 144; delivery obligations 142; offsetting trades 142–4; phases of 125–6; Globex and Globex LOB 134–6; Globex trades, rule for recording of 135; guaranteeing futures obligations 139–41; intermediate settlement prices 154; Introducing Broker (IB) 123; investor’s accounts, tracking equity in 151–3; invoice price on delivery 153–6; key concepts 158; Limit Bid (LBid) 129; Limit Offer (LOff) 129; limit order book (LOB) 130–1; depth in 131–4; limit orders 129–30; margin calls 145, 147–8, 152; margins (performance bonds) 144–5, 148; initial margin 145; maintenance margin 145; market orders 127–9; market with protection market orders (CME Group) 128; marking to market 144–51; daily unrealized gains and losses, adjustments for 146; matching trades 139–41; National Futures Association (NFA) 123; offset vs. delivery 155–6; long offsets futures position just prior to expiration 156; long trader takes delivery of underlying commodity 155–6; offsetting futures trades 141–4; open access trading 140; open contract 145; open interest 145; open outcry pit trades: CME Clearing House requirements for 137–9; trades entry into clearing system 138–9; trading cards, submission of 139; order execution 125–6; futures contract definition and 126; order submission 125–6; orders, types of 127–34; overall profits (and losses) 144, 150, 151, 153, 156, 157; participants in futures market 122–5; performance bonds (margins) 144–5, 148; pit trading, order flow process and 136–9; protection, market orders with 127–9; realization of daily value 149; recontracting futures positions 149, 151; Registered Commodity Representatives (RCRs) 122–3; segregated consumer funds 123–5; settlement prices 145–6, 151; settlement variation 146; short positions, assumption of 147–8; tracking equity in investor’s account 151–3; trading futures contracts, questions on organizational structures for 141 market price of risk (MPR): equivalent martingale measures (EMMs) and 605–6; risk-neutral valuation and 624 market risk 225–6 market with protection market orders (CME Group) 128 marking to market 144–51; daily unrealized gains and losses, adjustments for 146 martingale properties 533–6 matching principle 300 matching trades 139–41 mathematical modeling 596–7 maturity dates 328 Merck stock price fluctuations 346–7 minimum price increment 214, 215 minimum variance hedging 185–8; estimation of risk minimization hedge ratio 187–8; OLS regression 187–8; risk minimization hedge ratio, derivation of 186–7 model-based option pricing (MBOP) 398, 406, 455; alternative option pricing techniques 464–5; complete markets 449; European call option, synthesis of 453–64; hedge ratio and dollar bond position, definition of (step 2) 455; implications of replication (step 4) 462–4; parameterization (step 1) 454; replicating portfolio, construction of (step 3) 456–62; down-state, replication in 457; hedge ratio, magnitude of 461–2; sign of B 459–60; solving equations for ?


Stock Market Wizards: Interviews With America's Top Stock Traders by Jack D. Schwager

Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, Black-Scholes formula, book value, commodity trading advisor, computer vision, East Village, Edward Thorp, financial engineering, financial independence, fixed income, implied volatility, index fund, Jeff Bezos, John Meriwether, John von Neumann, junk bonds, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, margin call, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, money market fund, Myron Scholes, paper trading, passive investing, pattern recognition, proprietary trading, random walk, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, statistical arbitrage, Teledyne, the scientific method, transaction costs, Y2K

How do you turn information like who is doing what into an alternative option pricing model? The best example I can think of involves the gold market rather than stocks. Back in 1993, after a thirteen-year slide, gold rebounded above the psychologically critical $400 level. A lot of the commodity trading advisors [money managers in the futures markets, called CTAs for short], who are mostly trend followers, jumped in on long side of gold, assuming that the long-term downtrend had been reversed. Most of these people use models that will stop out or reverse their long positions if prices go down by a certain amount.

Shaw Financial Products, 259 DESoFT, 259 diagnostic capability, 29 discounts, 140-41, 157,213,250-52,253,315 Columbia Pictures, 100 commissions, 48, 134, 148, 175, 203, 213, 214, Disney, 93-94 diversification, 33, 34, 51, 86-87, 93, 306, 319, 321 dividend capture strategy, 140-41 328 Commodities Corporation, 191 dividends, 13, 133, 140-41 dog races, 129-30 commodity markets, 199,231 commodity trading advisors (CTAs), 231 Commodore Computer, 13-14 Dow Jones Industrial Average, 47, 109 Compaq, 37 competition, 73, 145, 229 earnings: compilers, 258 Complete Guide to the Futures Market, A (Schwager), 327n compliance departments, 11 1—13 Comp USA, 90 computers: market for, 37-38, 39, 43-44, 86-88, 90, 139, 244, 269,279-80 parallel-processor, 258-63 research based on, 77, 81, 129-30, 157-58, 181, 194-95, 197, 202-3, 204, 208, 215, 255, 274, 319 software for, 26, 86-88, 90, 139, 215 see also Internet confirmation statements, 16 conjunction trades, 109 consolidates, 24M4 contingency plans, 184, 186, 187 Cook, Mark D., 95-126 background of, 95-97 fund managed by, 97 losses of, 101-7, 108, 122-24, 126, 314 as novice trader, 97-107 profits of, 96, 97-98, 101, 112-19, 125 strategy of, 97, 107-26, 299, 301, 303, 304, 305, 308,312,314,315,316,319 Cook, Martha, 104-5, 123-24 Dutch tulip craze, 64 fraud, 91-92 Friess Associates, 58-59, 67, 73 front-running, 79-80 futures, 144-45, 191-92, 199, 202-3 see also options Galante, Dana, 75-94 fund managed by, 76, 85-89, 93 losses of, 86-88 as novice trader, 76, 77-85 profits of, 75-76, 93-94 strategy of, 75-77, 81, 85-94, 311, 324 as woman, 77, 88-89 gambling, 90, 225-26, 255-56, 266-67 Gap, 12,67-68 Gatev, Evan G., 256»i expectations of, 15, 16, 40-41, 49, 61, 63, 86-88, 138-39, 141,215-17,279,286-87 loss of, 81,89-90, 92,94, 138-39, 215-17, 279 General Electric, 136, 137 General Motors, 145 Goetzmann, William N., 256n price vs., 21, 22, 43-44, 52, 58, 59, 60, 62, 65, 66, gold prices, 102, 231-32, 310 72-73, 79, 81, 89, 92, 94, 149, 152, 154-55, 158, 164, 165, 166-67, 172,216,306,320,321, 325 quarterly reports of, 40, 60, 62-63, 84, 138-39, 141,215-17,286-87 "earnings surprise," 216 Goldwyn, Samuel, 118 "greater fool" premise, 34, 36 Greenberg, Ace, 136, 138 163, 165,318 Institutional Investor All-Star analyst team, 32 150, 151, 162, 185, 186, 218, 229-30, 240, 249, 259, 262, 279-81, 310-11 inventory, 90, 92 Investing Championship, U.S., I l l , 118, 170 investment: diversification of, 33, 34, 51, 86-87, 93, 306, 319, 321 institutional, 192,318 long-term, 40, 42, 157, 164, 234-35 return on, 46, 55, 59, 75-76, 97, 170, 243 size of, 32-33, 52 speculation vs., 20, 84-85, 177, 225-26 sea also portfolios Investor's Business Daily, 152 Istanbul Stock Exchange, 148, 1 53-54, 156 January effect, 198-99 Janus 20, 39-40 Japan, 7-8,64,223,303,310 J, Crew, 10 J.


pages: 537 words: 144,318

The Invisible Hands: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Bubbles, Crashes, and Real Money by Steven Drobny

Albert Einstein, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, backtesting, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , book value, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, commodity super cycle, commodity trading advisor, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency peg, debt deflation, diversification, diversified portfolio, equity premium, equity risk premium, family office, fiat currency, fixed income, follow your passion, full employment, George Santayana, global macro, Greenspan put, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, index fund, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, inventory management, inverted yield curve, invisible hand, junk bonds, Kickstarter, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, market microstructure, Minsky moment, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, North Sea oil, open economy, peak oil, pension reform, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price discovery process, price stability, private sector deleveraging, profit motive, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, savings glut, selection bias, Sharpe ratio, short selling, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, statistical arbitrage, stochastic volatility, stocks for the long run, stocks for the long term, survivorship bias, tail risk, The Great Moderation, Thomas Bayes, time value of money, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, two and twenty, unbiased observer, value at risk, Vanguard fund, yield curve, zero-sum game

We look for situations where asset prices do not correctly reflect macro fundamentals or do not identify and anticipate structural shifts in the economy. This approach is to be distinguished from more systematic approaches, which rely heavily on quantitative models based on historical data to take diversified positions in a large number of markets (commodity trading advisors, for example). Although these quantitative strategies may trade the same markets (currencies, fixed income, equity indices, etc.), the emphasis is on extracting technical signals rather than developing and expressing fundamental macro views. Our process essentially commences with a detailed and thorough analysis of the data, an analysis that can be either quantitative or qualitative.

However, given how much the commodity markets have evolved in the last five years in terms of product breadth, volume, and other factors, it is difficult to give a precise answer because these distributions are changing along with changes in the types of players in the market. The increased speculative flows in recent years have definitely changed the level of volatility, both from long-only players entering the market through indices and other means, and from the growing size and influence of CTA’s (commodity trading advisors). While some question whether speculative flows are fundamental to the functioning of the market, for me, it is clear that such flows have had a major impact. Speculative flows change the term structure of a market, which, in turn, changes the reaction function of a producer or storage operator.


Alpha Trader by Brent Donnelly

Abraham Wald, algorithmic trading, Asian financial crisis, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, backtesting, barriers to entry, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Boeing 747, buy low sell high, Checklist Manifesto, commodity trading advisor, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, deep learning, diversification, Edward Thorp, Elliott wave, Elon Musk, endowment effect, eurozone crisis, fail fast, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, full employment, global macro, global pandemic, Gordon Gekko, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, high net worth, hindsight bias, implied volatility, impulse control, Inbox Zero, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, iterative process, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, law of one price, loss aversion, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market microstructure, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, McMansion, Monty Hall problem, Network effects, nowcasting, PalmPilot, paper trading, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, prediction markets, price anchoring, price discovery process, price stability, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, secular stagnation, Sharpe ratio, short selling, side project, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, survivorship bias, tail risk, TED Talk, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, time dilation, too big to fail, transaction costs, value at risk, very high income, yield curve, you are the product, zero-sum game

I will focus on sources of edge for human traders and the date ranges I provide are my best estimate of when that source of edge was most prevalent. Most of these sources of edge still exist, but are greatly diminished from peak. Trend Following 1984 to 2003 Trend following systems were the go-to source for human (and computer) alpha in the 1980s and 1990s. Many large trend-following commodity trading advisors (CTAs) extracted meaningful abnormal returns for more than two decades. Returns from trend following systems have steadily declined over the past 40 years. Many studies cover the slow decline of trend following performance. This table from the Winton study63 shows the decline in trend following Sharpe ratios over time: 10-year gross Sharpe ratio.

Gawande), 95, 491 Cheer Hedge, 172, 204 Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), 284 China deval (2015), 441 China/US Trade War (2018—2019), inaccurate media accounts about, 98 Citi Pain Index, 345 clustering illusion, 217 See also apophenia CME Market Profile guide, 294, 331 CNBC, 83, 104, 235, 243, 259, 407 CNN Fear and Greed indicator, 345, 443 coach, trading, 106, 121, 122 Coates, John, 132, 491 Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), 62, 65—66, 69, 70, 71, 179, 186, 249 COMEX, 286 commissions, 277 commodity trading advisors (CTAs), 159, 301, 312 common knowledge, questionable, 259—265 bad economic news and stocks, 263—264 examples, 260—265 gold, 262-263 interest rates, 260, 261 stock market crashes, 264—265 stocks and bonds, 260—261 company earnings, idea generation and, 395 Comprehensive Assessment of Rational Thinking (CART), 62 confidence, calibrated, 34, 180—181 as trader attribute, 72, 75, 81 See also overconfidence confirmation bias, 80—81, 171, 197—203, 346 endowment effect and, 199 filtering trade ideas and, 410 highly intelligent people and, 63 how to combat, 199—203 narrative cycle and, 299 Stanford experiment, 200 conformity, social, 82—83 conformity bias, 83 conscientiousness, 47—48, 72, 383 academic achievement and, 51, 52 age and, 48, 48, 76 decisiveness as sub-trait of, 56, 119 growth mindset and, 95 how to boost, 56—58 impulse control as sub-trait of, 56 income and, 49, 50, 51 industriousness as sub-trait of, 56 orderliness as sub-trait of, 56 organized people as, 95 persistence as sub-trait of, 56 reliability as sub-trait of, 56 sport achievement and, 51, 52 success, 52, 56, 58, 71 See also self-control; self-discipline continuation patterns, 161 continuous improvement mindset, 58, 91 contrarians, 32, 34, 82, 83, 233—234, 300, 345 conviction, 107, 112, 113, 194, 256, 323, 355, 365, 369—370, 379, 493 See also conviction levels conviction levels, 370—377 Type I normal trade, 370, 372, 373, 375 Type II unique trade, 370—373, 374 Type III outlier trade, 373—374, 376—377 cooling off levels, 118—119 Corgnet, Brice, 66 correlated markets, filtering trade ideas and, 409 correlation and intermarket analysis, 162 costs.


pages: 192 words: 75,440

Getting a Job in Hedge Funds: An Inside Look at How Funds Hire by Adam Zoia, Aaron Finkel

backtesting, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, collateralized debt obligation, commodity trading advisor, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deal flow, discounted cash flows, family office, financial engineering, fixed income, global macro, high net worth, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, merger arbitrage, offshore financial centre, proprietary trading, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, risk-adjusted returns, rolodex, short selling, side project, statistical arbitrage, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, systematic trading, two and twenty, unpaid internship, value at risk, yield curve, yield management

These changes can affect interest rates and in turn may impact currency, stock, and bond markets. Global macro funds depend on their own fundamental macroeconomic research and often employ a top-down global approach. Managed Futures This strategy invests in listed financial and commodity futures markets and currency markets around the world. The managers are usually referred to as Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs). Trading disciplines are generally systematic or discretionary. Systematic traders tend to use price- and market-specific information (often technical) to make trading decisions, while discretionary managers use a more judgmental or fundamental approach. c01.indd 10 1/10/08 11:00:57 AM Getting Started 11 Multi-strategy Multi-strategy investing uses various strategies simultaneously to realize short- and long-term gains.


All About Asset Allocation, Second Edition by Richard Ferri

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, asset-backed security, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, book value, buy and hold, capital controls, commoditize, commodity trading advisor, correlation coefficient, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, diversification, diversified portfolio, equity premium, equity risk premium, estate planning, financial independence, fixed income, full employment, high net worth, Home mortgage interest deduction, implied volatility, index fund, intangible asset, inverted yield curve, John Bogle, junk bonds, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, managed futures, Mason jar, money market fund, mortgage tax deduction, passive income, pattern recognition, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Shiller, selection bias, Sharpe ratio, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, survivorship bias, too big to fail, transaction costs, Vanguard fund, yield curve

The managers of an activist fund take sizable positions in small, flawed companies and then use their influence to force management changes and restructuring. A third type of event-driven fund is venture capital. Venture funds invest in start-up companies. Directional or tactical strategies. The largest group of hedge funds uses directional or tactical strategies. An example of a directional fund is a commodities trading advisor (CTA). CTAs use charts and mathematical models to identify trends in global futures markets. CTAs may go long or short a market to profit from both rising and falling futures prices. A second example of a tactical fund is a macro fund. These are fundamentally driven “top-down,” big-picture bets on currencies, interest rates, commodities, and global stock markets.


pages: 337 words: 89,075

Understanding Asset Allocation: An Intuitive Approach to Maximizing Your Portfolio by Victor A. Canto

accounting loophole / creative accounting, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset allocation, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California energy crisis, capital asset pricing model, commodity trading advisor, corporate governance, discounted cash flows, diversification, diversified portfolio, equity risk premium, financial engineering, fixed income, frictionless, global macro, high net worth, index fund, inflation targeting, invisible hand, John Meriwether, junk bonds, law of one price, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, low interest rates, market bubble, merger arbitrage, money market fund, new economy, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Phillips curve, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, selection bias, seminal paper, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, statistical arbitrage, stocks for the long run, survivorship bias, systematic bias, Tax Reform Act of 1986, the market place, transaction costs, Y2K, yield curve, zero-sum game

In the long run, the only way hedge-fund establishments are going to survive while charging higher fees is if they deliver higher net-of-fee returns and/or much lower volatility. This is an empirical issue. 226 Table 12.1 Hedge-fund strategy definition. Convertible Arbitrage strategies consist of convertible bond investments. The idea is to buy a company’s convertible bond and sell the same company short the common stock. CTA Global or Commodity Trading Advisor funds invest in listed financial and commodity markets as well as currency markets all over the world. They can follow systematic or discretionary strategies. Distressed Securities involve buying back, at a low price, the securities of companies experiencing financial difficulties. Securities range from the lowest to highest risk (that is, senior secured debt to common stock).


Systematic Trading: A Unique New Method for Designing Trading and Investing Systems by Robert Carver

asset allocation, automated trading system, backtesting, barriers to entry, Black Swan, buy and hold, cognitive bias, commodity trading advisor, Credit Default Swap, diversification, diversified portfolio, easy for humans, difficult for computers, Edward Thorp, Elliott wave, fear index, fixed income, global macro, implied volatility, index fund, interest rate swap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, merger arbitrage, Nick Leeson, paper trading, performance metric, proprietary trading, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Sharpe ratio, short selling, survivorship bias, systematic trading, technology bubble, transaction costs, Two Sigma, Y Combinator, yield curve

The law of active management implies that if you can realise a Sharpe ratio of 0.40 on a single instrument when trading with a holding period of a month, then betting once a day could boost that to an SR of 1.8. If you held your positions for just an hour and bet eight times a day you’d get to an SR of 5.2! As I said earlier, this assumes that profitable opportunities can be found at such timescales, and also ignores trading costs. 38. The analysis was done on a large set of Commodity Trading Advisors, a type of fund that is dominated by systematic trend followers. These returns are post fees (so the gross returns would be higher), but also include interest received on margin funds. These two effects roughly balance out. A small number of other types of systematic hedge fund are able to consistently return Sharpe ratios above 1.0.


Trading Risk: Enhanced Profitability Through Risk Control by Kenneth L. Grant

backtesting, business cycle, buy and hold, commodity trading advisor, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, delta neutral, diversification, diversified portfolio, financial engineering, fixed income, frictionless, frictionless market, George Santayana, global macro, implied volatility, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Meriwether, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, market design, Myron Scholes, performance metric, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Sharpe ratio, short selling, South Sea Bubble, Stephen Hawking, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, two-sided market, uptick rule, value at risk, volatility arbitrage, yield curve, zero-coupon bond

Over extended periods of time, they will provide insights into longer-term performance patterns that are difficult to discern with daily or weekly information. This is particularly true for complex portfolios, where it may not be practical to synchronize performance data on a more frequent basis. Moreover, because many investment portfolios (particularly hedge funds and Commodity Trading Advisors) report results on a monthly basis, monthly data can be a useful means of benchmarking your performance against other professional traders. I would suggest that even if you are able to put together daily or weekly performance results, you should create and analyze your monthly time series as well.


pages: 289 words: 113,211

A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation by Richard Bookstaber

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, backtesting, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Black-Scholes formula, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, butterfly effect, commoditize, commodity trading advisor, computer age, computerized trading, disintermediation, diversification, double entry bookkeeping, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Edward Thorp, family office, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, frictionless, frictionless market, Future Shock, George Akerlof, global macro, implied volatility, index arbitrage, intangible asset, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, John Meriwether, junk bonds, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, loose coupling, managed futures, margin call, market bubble, market design, Mary Meeker, merger arbitrage, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nick Leeson, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, Pierre-Simon Laplace, proprietary trading, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolodex, Saturday Night Live, selection bias, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, statistical arbitrage, tail risk, The Market for Lemons, time value of money, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, uranium enrichment, UUNET, William Langewiesche, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Consider the following scan of articles from various issues of the Journal of Alternative Investments, just one of a number of journals on hedge funds: “Currency Market Trading Performance”; “Timber Investment”; “Current Attitudes to Private Equity”; “Convertible Arbitrage: A Manager’s Perspective”; “Macro Trading and Investment Strategies”; “Commodity Trading Advisor Survey”; “Stock Selection in Eastern European Markets”; “Market Neutral versus Long/Short Equity”; “Merger Arbitrage: Evidence of Profitability”; “Analysis of Real Estate Investments in the U.S.”; “Benefits of International Small Cap Stocks.” What is the common ground, other than being related to investments?


pages: 363 words: 28,546

Portfolio Design: A Modern Approach to Asset Allocation by R. Marston

asset allocation, Bob Litterman, book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, carried interest, commodity trading advisor, correlation coefficient, currency risk, diversification, diversified portfolio, equity premium, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, family office, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, German hyperinflation, global macro, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income per capita, index fund, inventory management, junk bonds, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, managed futures, mortgage debt, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, passive investing, purchasing power parity, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Sharpe ratio, Silicon Valley, stocks for the long run, superstar cities, survivorship bias, transaction costs, Vanguard fund

But it’s useful to compare the performance of these investments with their passive counterparts. In Chapter 9, returns on the Credit Suisse/Tremont hedge fund index were analyzed over the period 1994 to 2009. A subset of this overall index is the Credit Suisse/Tremont Managed Futures index tracking the returns of Commodity Trading Advisors (CTA) who take positions in bond, currency, and equity as well as commodity futures markets.12 Since 1980, the Barclay CTA index has provided another source of managed futures returns. The index was begun in 1985 with backdating of returns to January 1980.13 Table 12.7 reports the returns on these two active indexes and compares them with returns on the two passive indexes described earlier.


Unknown Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager

3D printing, algorithmic trading, automated trading system, backtesting, barriers to entry, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Brexit referendum, buy and hold, commodity trading advisor, computerized trading, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, diversification, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, family office, financial deregulation, fixed income, forward guidance, index fund, Jim Simons, litecoin, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, market bubble, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Nick Leeson, performance metric, placebo effect, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Sharpe ratio, short squeeze, side project, systematic trading, tail risk, transaction costs

I’m taking positions before the market confirms them. I’m taking trades on inferior patterns. And, of course, you can have periods where both conditions exist: My methodology is out of sync with the markets, and I am out of sync with my methodology. That was 2013 through mid-2014. At the time, CTAs were all tanking. [CTAs stand for Commodity Trading Advisors, the legal term for registered managers in the futures markets.5] There was lots of talk suggesting market behavior had changed and that to survive as a trader, you had to change. And I drank the Kool-Aid. I started tweaking what I do. In what way? I added indicators. I tried mean reversion trades.


pages: 499 words: 148,160

Market Wizards: Interviews With Top Traders by Jack D. Schwager

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, backtesting, beat the dealer, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, commodity trading advisor, computerized trading, conceptual framework, delta neutral, Edward Thorp, Elliott wave, fixed income, implied volatility, index card, junk bonds, locking in a profit, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Michael Milken, money market fund, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, short selling, Teledyne, transaction costs, uptick rule, yield curve, zero-sum game

It was such an attractive idea that I didn’t want to spoil things by finding out too many facts. I was afraid I would get cold feet. Weren’t you skeptical? Didn’t he sound too much like a used car salesman? No, I had never invested in anything, and I was very naive. I hired John, who was a junior at my school, to be my commodity trading advisor at $30 a week. Occasionally, I threw in free potato chips and soda. He had a theory that you could subsist on that diet. That’s all you paid him? Weren’t there any profit incentives—extra potato chips if he did well? No. How much money did you allot for trading? About $1,000 that I had saved up.