While one month’s performance is no way to judge an investment that has 3 to 5 year cycles, a glance at who’s doing well in the different environments month to month can be a useful data point at times. Here’s the top managed futures performers (by return only) for the month gone by:
Category: Managed Futures
22
Aug
2014
21
Aug
2014
A Global Macro take on Crude, FOMC, and Everything in Between
In case you missed it, we took to the airwaves with BTFDtv via a Google Hangout yesterday to talk everything from Corn plantings to interest rate levels with Mr. Roland Austrup, manager of the Attain Global Macro fund, one of our newly launched family of alternative funds.
We knew Roland would be a great guest as he has a great TV face, and loves to talk markets. Did he Ever.
20
Aug
2014
How I Missed 1,300% in $GOOG
Because it’s the 10th anniversary of one of the most successful IPOs of all time, the now ubiquitous Google, providing us all with a rare chance to look back and see just how stupid we were to not get involved in that offering. How stupid were most of us? A $10,000 investment in Google at its $85 IPO price would now be worth $139,458.82 today, for a smooth 1,294% return, or about 30% per year. I’m sure more than a few of us could have found $10,000 somewhere back in 2004, and could use over $100 grand extra today!
20
Aug
2014
Alternative Links: The Next 5 Years
Managed Futures in the Next Five Years, Feature – Advisors that are ready for the bear market with alternatives, and Deconstructing Management Fees In Alternative Funds
14
Aug
2014
Attain’s Semi-Annual CTA Rankings
We know we’re a little late getting our semi-annual CTA rankings out this summer, but had good reason (launching our Family of Alternative Investment Funds). It’s something we do every 6 months for the past couple of years, with pursuit of answering the question we get most often, “What’s the BEST managed futures program?”
13
Aug
2014
12
Aug
2014
A Big List of Alternative Investment Folks on Twitter
Here’s our compilation of people and firms currently out there on twitter providing the latest insight, humor, debate, and news on investments – especially the alternative kind:
11
Aug
2014
YTD Asset Class Scoreboard
Well that was a lot of red in July, with all of the asset classes we track showing negative performance behind stock markets’ first losing month in the past six. The big loser, commodities, which fell over 5% as energy markets sold off and the big sell off in grains through the month of July, making Commodities the only asset class negative on the year.
07
Aug
2014
Mama Said Knock You Out
Well, we bet Emil Van Essen, the quirky (in a good way) Canadian who runs the self named Emil Van Essen managed futures shop here in Chicago, may have been humming that first line (if not the entire song) throughout the month of July. You see, Van Essen managed to post returns of 6.39% in July, his best month since May of 2011, a year the program returned 33%. Since that blowout year, it has been more of a struggle for Emil and his team, however; with losses of about -10.23% in 2012, -6.31% in 2013, and a weak first quarter of this year, down about -4.5%. {past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results}.
06
Aug
2014
Do we still need to do this? A Trend Following Rebuttal
We’ve been known to help straighten out some wayward journalists from time to time, and our friend Michael Covel pointed out just such a journalist in need of some help last night via twitter:
