One of the best things about being in an investment which can do well when markets are down is the fun you can have at cocktail parties, in the locker room at the golf club, and dinner with friends. A -334 point down day in the Dow and around -5% move off of all time highs starts to bring out the shrugs and exasperated expressions, as those well to do’s around you murmur their version of the timeless classic:
Category: Macro Commentary
10
Oct
2014
02
Oct
2014
Shhh… Managed Futures up 4.93% in Q3
Being in the managed futures biz, you might expect us to be leading a parade complete with marching band and tumbling coppers a’ la the opening scene of Austin Powers following a month like September, where two of the family of Attain Funds posted double digit returns, and the managed futures index was up 1.94% to finish the 3rd quarter up +4.93% (past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results)
29
Sep
2014
Long the US Dollar… And Loving it
We tend to have a knack for highlighting a certain market move or environment on the blog, and that market or environment quickly reversing course upon our piece hitting the airwaves. The latest example looks to be the Currency Markets. So it’s no coincidence that the ‘best quarter for the dollar in 4 years’ coincides with the best managed futures performance in 4 years. This is just the sort of move that managed futures programs are designed to capture.
23
Sep
2014
A Golf Clap for Reporting on “Commodity Hedge Funds”
Managed Futures and alternatives have been getting a bad rap over the past couple of years, and we’ve spent far too much time “setting the record straight.” We thought it might be a good idea to highlight a major publication (The Wall Street Journal) for doing a decent job capturing the climate of “commodity hedge funds” this summer. What are we talking about?
18
Sep
2014
CalPERS Hedge Fund Exit: Earthquake or Godzilla?
The big news in the alternatives world this week is of course that the largest pension in the world CalPERS is ditching it’s Absolute Return unit and unloading $4 Billion worth of hedge funds. Is this the end of hedge fund investing by institutional investors (an earthquake), typical performance chasing by an investor (albeit a very large one), or a result of their enormous size (Godzilla).
More than anything, what we’re may really be seeing here is the upper bound of the hedge fund/institutional investor asset allocation game. CalPERS seemed like the best client a hedge fund could have… with nearly $300 billion in assets which could be allocated to hedge funds, but some boring performance on what really amounted to a test run (1.5% of assets), likely made them see that even if hedge funds were great – they couldn’t play in that pool in any real meaningful way.
30
Jun
2014
The Climate of Volatility, Investing, and Science
Some people have been saying Barry Rithotz’s writing has been going downhill of late (here), and we did like the old non-Bloomberg Barry a little better ourselves if truth must be told – but one of his most recent pieces is a peach, where he ties in volatility, investing, science, and climate change together. His basic message – don’t think about it as global warming, or even climate change. Think about it as a dramatic increase in the global climate’s volatility, what he calls Global Weather Volatility. And don’t get caught up in the politics about it, get caught up in how to invest in it. As Ritholtz puts it:
25
Jun
2014
Rise of the Robo Advisors?
What is a robo-advisor anyway? Why are people supposedly fearing it? It’s the financial equivalent of booking an Uber on your phone versus standing in the cab line at the hotel. And it’s gone beyond the idea stage to real money.
23
Jun
2014
Lessons Learned From 37 Years of Futures Trading
Managed Futures have come a long way in the past 37 years, and so has Barbara Mueller, who will be retiring at the end of March after nearly four decades dealing with futures trading. Barbara has been working in the industry since 1973, and has been an invaluable asset to Attain Capital since 2006.
In honor of her retirement, we’re taking a break from our traditional analysis this week to pay tribute to Ms. Mueller. It has been an honor to work with someone as knowledgeable, talented and motivated as Barbara, and here she provides us with her (often comical) insight from 37 years of experience in the world of futures trading.
11
Jun
2014
Natural Gas ETFs – Heads You Lose, Tails You Lose More:
We did our monthly look at how various commodity ETFs track the futures markets they’re designed to follow recently, and found a rather interesting data point in Natural Gas. So why is UNG suddenly outperforming the December futures strategy? You guessed it… Natural Gas has moved ever so slightly into Backwardation
04
Jun
2014
About that Volatility = Complacency Claim…
Here’s how the usual reporting on low volatility goes… There’s Low Volatility because the VIX is low, and the VIX being low reflects investors paying less for future downside protection, and paying less for downside protection means investors are less concerned (or aware) of the possibility of downside… so low volatility means these investors are […]
