Trend Following-Trend Commandments

[Ash1972]

Quote from marketsurfer:

Rod makes good sense, What am I missing?

TF has been crowded for the last 10 years at least. Most good TF funds are considerably up over the last 10 years.

How can anyone say that trendfollowers last made money in the 70s and 80s? The same profits were made in the 90s and 2000s. There is plenty of dumb money around these days - right now mutual funds' cash allocations are at an all time low.

 

[marketsurfer]

Quote from Ash1972:

TF has been crowded for the last 10 years at least. Most good TF funds are considerably up over the last 10 years.

How can anyone say that trendfollowers last made money in the 70s and 80s? The same profits were made in the 90s and 2000s. There is plenty of dumb money around these days - right now mutual funds' cash allocations are at an all time low.

There is plenty of money looking for a home, but Bernie Madoff was the end of "dumb" money.

 

[Ash1972]

Quote from marketsurfer:

There is plenty of money looking for a home, but <I>Bernie Madoff was the end of "dumb" money.</I>

Famous last words There are hundreds of Madoff type ponzi schemes operating right now in the US and Europe, just smaller in scale. It's only a matter of time before they get busted. There will always be a demand for funds purporting to return a steady 12% or whatever per year and people will always fall for them.

I personally would class all mutual fund investors as dumb money, not because the stock market per se is bad but because of the way they tend to behave: getting in at tops and running for the exit at bottoms.

 

[Butterball]

The big difference between today and the 1970s/1980s in CTA trading is that the 1970s-1980s paid 10-15% interest on your equity and today pays 0%.

Interest rates are an overlooked return factor for futures funds. A 0% year in the 2010s would have e.g. been a (1.0-0.3)*12% = 8.4% year in the 1980s (@ 30% margin to equity and 12% LIBOR).

 

[Ash1972]

Quote from Butterball:

The big difference between today and the 1970s/1980s in CTA trading is that the 1970s-1980s paid 10-15% interest on your equity and today pays 0%.

Interest rates are an overlooked return factor for futures funds. A 0% year in the 2010s would have e.g. been a (1.0-0.3)*12% = 8.4% year in the 1980s (@ 30% margin to equity and 12% LIBOR).

Interesting, especially as that component of the return is not scalable.

Most CTAs offer notional funding, i.e. if say $150 000 dollars is required per unit of trading you can use only $75 000, thereby achieving twice the return in cash terms (and of course drawdowns twice as large).

 

[Rodney King]

Quote from Butterball:

the 1970s/1980s in CTA trading is that the 1970s-1980s paid 10-15% interest on your equity and today pays 0%.

That's a true and important point, although subject to various provisos. Also the magnitude of the effect isn't "10-15%." CTAs in those days held cash primarily in T-Bills, which yielded (based on the series at http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/TB3MS.txt) about 7.5% on average in the 70s and 80s.

 

[EPrado]

Quote from marketsurfer:

Rod makes good sense, What am I missing?

Rod does not make good sense.

From 1990-2000 TF"s had HUGE runs. Gigantic profits.

From 2000-2010 has been a bit tougher on them....but the ones I follow had 3 yrs of +30% to 50%, with 3 drawdown yrs of down 13-16%.

So for him to imply that the TF game is over is a bit ridiculous.

I am sure when you get back from your honeymoon you will be quacking away that TF's got clobbered in June.

And when they have huge profits in the upcoming months you will clam up again.

 

[Rodney King]

Quote from EPrado:

Rod does not make good sense.

From 1990-2000 TF"s had HUGE runs. Gigantic profits.

From 2000-2010 has been a bit tougher on them....but the ones I follow had 3 yrs of +30% to 50%, with 3 drawdown yrs of down 13-16%.

So for him to imply that the TF game is over is a bit ridiculous.

I said I believed TF would make money over the long term, and that aggregate AUM rose sharply after the good run TF had in 2008, which has pressured recent returns. Do you disagree with either point?

Who are "the ones [you] follow"? Let me guess -- they outperformed the industry indexes substantially...

 

[EPrado]

"but I much doubt we'll ever again see the golden days of the 70s and 80s"


This is flat out wrong as TF's have had big gains throughout 2000-2010.


The ones I follow had 30% or so returns in 2010.

And yes...they have crushed the indexes over time.

 

[Rodney King]

Quote from EPrado:

The ones I follow had 30% or so returns in 2010. And yes... they have crushed the indexes over time.

"Follow" == "invest in"? If so, congrats. But in any case, unless you have a methodology for selecting <i>specific</i> TFs ahead of time, the discussion would more fruitfully focus on the standard industry indexes.