Wrong Barclays. This one is in Iowa, USA. From their web page (previously referenced): The Barclay Group, founded in 1985, is dedicated to serving institutional and high net worth clients worldwide in the field of hedge fund and managed futures performance measurement and portfolio management.
Might be the wrong Bill Dunn too. The gazillionaire system trader Bill Dunn (founder of Dunn Capital Management, $800M under management) seems to be married to a lady named Rebecca, according to this web page. Perhaps he divorced Patty before marrying Rebecca.
Wrong way to evaluate Absolute Return investments (like managed futures, which is what CTAs sell) too. Benchmarking against stock market averages is particularly irrelevant. In fact the primary demand for managed futures is as a diversifying complement to stock market averages, since CTA returns typically have a correlation coefficient of -0.25 to the S&P. They are the prototypical free lunch: positive returns and negative correlation to the reference asset. Markowitz efficient frontier optimal portfolios typically consist of approx 55% bonds, 45% stocks, and 5% managed futures.
However, if your point is that somebody with a $25-$50K account should not trade the typical CTA sort of mechanical system, using the typical CTA sort of leverage, then I absolutely agree.
