Financial media is all over Miller-Coors’ frustrations claiming London Metal Exchange’s lack of regulations is leading to the banks artificially raising prices. However, what’s catching our eye is the humorous Wall Street Journal article detailing the quirky and bizarre rules, such as traders having to be attached to a red sofa.
Category: Managed Forex
Commodity “Supercycle” Over?
The Wall Street Journal’s latest headline is claiming, “Investors, Analysts See End of Commodity ‘Supercycle.” We’re wondering if a “supercycle” was here to begin with. Regardless, recent commodity movement isn’t surprising as they typically show volatile short term swings. Here are more takeaways:
Managed Futures Down -0.74% in September; time to Clap if you believe!
Managed Futures is running out of time to turn things around in 2013. Things were looking up halfway through September, but after the fed announcement not to taper, things went downhill from there. We’re starting to feel a little like Cathy Rigby in a Peter Pan play, urging people to ‘Clap if You Believe’ to resurrect good ol’ TinkerBell. But we don’t need the magic of children to resurrect managed futures. We just need some directional volatility to appear.
No, Bloomberg, the managed futures industry is not a scam
Is the managed futures industry a scam? Bloomberg would surely have you think so with the headline “How Investors Lose 89% of Gains from Futures Funds.” Now we couldn’t agree more that the 63 funds (sold by Wall Street) they reviewed are bad for investors. But that’s not the overwhelming majority of the managed futures industry. Check out our complete rebuttal of Bloomberg’s article
Devil of a Dilemma: Add the Carry Trade to Trend Following?
We not all that into “foreign exchange portfolio’s” seeing people get too carried away trying to get foreign exchange exposure without really understanding what that is or does. However, Eclipse’s recent paper does a sufficient job highlighting managed futures, and suggests combining FX Trend Following with FX Carry Trade looks better than by themselves. But it comes with the caveat of a higher correlation to the FX Carry Trade during crisis periods.
The US Dollar/Euro Currency Bat Signal
We don’t know what this “Bat Pattern” in the US Dollar and Euro Currency means so close to Halloween, but it’s got us a little scared/happy (depending on if long or short the Euro). It’s probably a reminder to talk about the Euro’s negative correlation to the U.S Dollar index, and the history of the two.
Chart of the Week: Bring on the Bitcoin Futures?
With the majority of major currencies being downplayed it’s hard to imagine little Bitcoin, a digital currency grabbing the currency headlines. In less than a month it’s gained around 210% percent…. The more interesting thing to us in the managed futures world, who are semi-starved for a trend, is looking at this parabolic trend in Bitcoin and wishing there were a futures market tracking it so our clients could participate.
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.
It’s Final: 2013 Asset Class Scoreboard
Not that anyone didn’t already know – but US Stocks did really, really well last year, leading the race for top asset class basically wire to wire on the way to +30% returns for the S&P 500 to lead our 2013 Asset Class Scoreboard… read ‘em and weep below:
5 Reasons This Crude Move is Unbelievable
t’s been one amazing sell off in Crude Oil; so amazing we can’t stop writing about it. We’ve covered the long term picture of Crude, The Best Tweets from Crude’s Drop, How to Play a Bounce , and everyone else’s articles on crude. But we can’t stop staring at it… We’re the commodity focused moth to the proverbial flame.
But why is this sell off so amazing? What’s special about it?