Some of the CTAs that Attain’s Juan Carlos Herrera has caught up with at the London CTA Expo show just how diverse strategies within managed futures can be. James River, Emil Van Essen and Dominion Capital are all there, and all three do very different things. How so? Emil Van Essen focuses on the spread […]
Category: Managed Futures
07
Jul
2011
06
Jul
2011
Greetings from London!
Houston-based Attain team member Juan Carlos Herrera is representing us well across the pond this week as he attends the London CTA Expo. While the event kicks off tomorrow, Juan Carlos attended a special networking event today called Sungard City Days. The topics of conversation today centered on “emerging” markets and financial regulation. The emerging […]
06
Jul
2011
ETFs v. Cash and Futures YTD
The past month has served as yet another good example of why to invest in futures contracts instead of ETFs. Not only have ETFs continued their streak of underperforming futures contracts, but in the case of corn, in particular, fell miserably short of returns generated by futures contracts. We still haven’t heard a good answer […]
06
Jul
2011
Week in Review
Since Monday was taken up by fireworks and cookouts for most of us, we have skipped the newsletter this weekend in favor of a week in review blog post. It was a week of rebounding stocks, as the Nasdaq lead the charge with gains of 6.68%. Bonds were not as lucky, with 30 year bonds […]
01
Jul
2011
We estimate managed futures down -2.28% in June
Based on preliminary data from the Newedge CTA Index, Credit Suisse Dow Jones Core Managed Futures Index, and the performance of the CTAs we track here at Attain, we are estimating managed futures finished June down -2.28%, bringing quarterly performance to -3.37% and YTD performance to -3.39%. It was generally a difficult month and quarter […]
30
Jun
2011
How do you lose 11% of your corn stocks?
Corn just got cheap. Well, at least relatively speaking. After months of prices edging higher on increasingly dismal stock and planting reports, investors got quite a shock today when a monthly report indicated that corn stocks were 11% larger than expected, and corn sowing was 2% above what analysts had predicted. All of a sudden, […]
29
Jun
2011
Officiating Today’s Game – the NFA and CFTC
You may, on occasion, hear us refer to the NFA or CFTC in our writing, but aside from a jumble of letters, what are these organizations and what do they do? The answer is simple: they work to ensure legal and ethical standards are upheld across the industry. In 1974, Congress passed the Commodity Futures […]
28
Jun
2011
Contango, Backwardation and Relative Value in Brent and WTI Crude Oil
After hearing a manager last week talk about their trade of shorting the negative roll yield WTI Crude futures (West Texas Intermediate grade Crude Oil – aka Crude Oil as we know it here in the US) and going long the less negative to positive roll yield Brent Crude futures, our curiosity got the better […]
28
Jun
2011
Managed Futures Spotlight: Quantum Leap Capital
This week’s managed futures spotlight belongs to none other than Quantum Leap Capital. It is not often you meet a CTA from Mexico- never mind a CTA that also built a world class visual effects studio (also in Mexico) that won an Oscar for its work on the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Today, […]
24
Jun
2011
MFA Conference Reflections
Another MFA conference has come and gone, and we can’t help but feel as though this time around was decidedly different from the MFAs of yesteryear. The feel of the event was unique, but not really quantifiable. What were the takeaways? The emergence of new traders from Wall Street proprietary desks. We’ve found a surge […]
