Quote from HoundDogOne:
This first one is not a challenge at all.
You say its not a challenge, but then you go on to say:
Quote from HoundDogOne:
... applying ** sophisticated quantitative analysis **...
... And trade in and out ** extremely actively ** (on 40 instruments simultaneously!)
... but ONLY in the hands of an experienced, professional quant...
... With highly customized, proprietary software.
... take several years of experience to learn to avoid the pitfalls indigenous to REITS...
... And 6 figures to devlop the trading systems over time.
... (Do not try this at home)...
This sounds like the epitome of a challenge to me.

What you suggest is a very interesting extension of pairs-trading to baskets in an industry. It would be a huge challenge to sort the 60-70 REITs in a way that puts 20 in the long basket (i.e., those with upside reversion/movement potential) and 20 in short basket (i.e., those with downside reversion/movement potential) while keeping the two baskets nicely balanced with regard to interest rate exposure, geographic region, and office/commercial/residential category exposure. Very tricky.
Quote from HoundDogOne:The second part is actually the harder part.
When you hedge against anything external or dissimilar...
You are, by definition, making a ** directional bet **...
In return for, hopefully, lower long term portfolio volatility.
This seems easier to me as long as the fraction of variance of price movement in the prime trade is relatively constant with respect to the hedged variable. E.g., if interest rate fluctuations explain 20% of the variance of price movement of my tradable, then I might take a small hedge position in something that is more directly tied to interest rate movements (e.g., an instrument tied to bonds).
I disagree that its an intentional directional play because I'm making no assumptions about whether the hedge will go up or down. I'm only hedging to remove variance due to some financial variable (e.g. interest rates or forex) that my system doesn't track.
At best you could argue that every hedge is an unintentional directional play because the short side of the hedge only adds profit when the short-side instrument drops in price. But I say this is really unintentional because if you knew the short side was going to drop, then you could trade it all by itself.
I agree with you that hedging is a way to reduce portfolio variability. I see hedging as an explicit admission of ignorance about the direction of some element of price movement. It is a way to remove risks (both potential profits and losses) associated with parts of the price movement that I have insufficient knowledge about. Thus the point of hedging is to
avoid making a directional play by cancelling out directional moves that one has no ability to predict.