Christmas came early for financial bloggers. As if one major event wasn’t enough, the Federal Reserve and Captain Bernanke (our personal nickname) announced the much hyped, much anticipated start of tapering, but only slightly. Here was the action in the DOW, Nikkei, and Vix – see if you can spot when the announcement was made:
Category: Macro Commentary
18
Dec
2013
CTA’s and CPO’s: Vote for Bry and Jaffarian
Two such good eggs are Doug Bry and Ernest Jaffarian, who were concerned enough about the industry response to MF Global that they petitioned to get placed on the ballot for NFA Director to do something about it. Well, they’re now facing a contested election, and we at Attain would like to see them continue the efforts and work that are underway to bring needed reforms to NFA.
17
Dec
2013
Mark Twain Warns about Investing in Stocks in January
Ok, we may have taken a little bit (a substantial amount) of liberty with that headline, but the statement isn’t completely false. Here’s the rest of what the great American Writer supposedly had to say.
13
Dec
2013
The Overall Buzz about Managed Futures from The Top Managers Themselves
Kudos to HFR and CTA Intelligence Magazine for putting on a different this week. This wasn’t the usual “promise” of matching up managers with potential investors, which more often than not fails to materialize. This event was more of a brainstorming session on how to raise assets rather than a place to find assets… as well as an opportunity for CTAs to mingle and question billion dollar managers, pension consultants, and multifamily office reps on how to crack into their slice of high society.
11
Dec
2013
Blast from the past: How Futures saved Stocks
We’re happy to review the recent re-release of the documentary “Cancel Crash,” documenting the Stock Market crash of 1987, and how the futures market in Chicago saved the Dow. The story within the story was what was going on the next day, October 20th in Chicago, how three transactions helped saved the markets when no one else was trading.
09
Dec
2013
Do Investors really have to choose between Rotten Eggs?
It seems like nary a day goes by without a new article popping up hating on diversification. Not because there’s anything really wrong with diversification, but because financial journalism seems to think there’s something wrong with diversification. Take a recent Market Watch article that explains that there’s nothing wrong with the theory of diversification, just that none of the asset classes are worth diversifying in. The only problem is the article leaves out managed futures… We throw it into the mix to see if it changes anything.
06
Dec
2013
Start of Something New: CTA Leaders Summit
We love to see emerging voices in the managed futures space, and we can say that the newly launched CTA Intelligence magazine is becoming a good piece of…wait for it… intelligence. And we’re excited to be part of their newest initiative – the inaugural CTA Leaders Summit happening next week in New York City; where Attain’s CEO Jeff Malec was invited to share his thoughts on the state of the industry.
04
Dec
2013
03
Dec
2013
3 Paths to Commodity Exposure: Which one works best for you?
Each month, we write a post, crunch the data, and see how commodity ETF’s are performing against the commodity futures markets they are supposed to be tracking. But this concept only allows investors to make money when commodities are on the rise. More than a few people think that is rather limiting, and think the better way is to be able to make money in commodities whether they go up or down, whether commodities are rising or falling.
27
Nov
2013
Option Traders: Focus on the (dead) Turkey tomorrow
While you dig into the delicious cooked to perfection turkey tomorrow, we want you to think about the life of that turkey in hypothetical terms. The turkey has “the good life,” including round the clock care, all the food it can muster, developing a life of self-satisfaction, until the 1,001st day, day when there’s the surprise where instead of receiving food, it becomes it. Our angle is from the investment side, and how there is an important lesson to be derived from the untimely end of the well-fed bird. Whether the chart below looks to you like your stock portfolio since 2009 or your Bitcoin holdings – it serves as a reminder that the unthinkable can and will happen.
