"When bonds drop by two stand deviations, I don't want my trend following model to cut its position by a third [due to increased vol.] Higher skew allows clients to monetize that diversification, whereas with vol targeting and lower skew, the manager is monetizing that benefit."
“When it notched up its first $1m one-day profit in 1990, Simons handed out champagne — but $1m one-day gains quickly “became so frequent that the drinking got a bit out of hand”
"By far, the best investing book is Reminiscences Of A Stock Operator. Everything in that book is absolutely true about how markets work, how human nature works, the mistakes people make, the greed that they have, the ways they get themselves in trouble."
"What is it about human nature that makes it so easy for even very smart people to follow their biases. The only solution is to turn over your decisions to a set of rules that will eliminate the biases. I am going to have an outside force bind me to good behavior. This is the
"So everyone is bullish right? Hardly. Per Barrons, 27% of money managers are bullish on stocks over the next 12 mos, the lowest in 20 yrs. ATH makes people more cautious."
Hopeful with losses, afraid with profits. A reason why trend following works.
"You don’t win by predicting the future; you win by getting the odds right. Bet on the one more likely to win than most people expect. That’s the one that gives you the best odds. That’s the bet that pays off over time."
"Human behavior will never be completely “efficient.” Short-term anomalies exist because humans have always acted emotionally. Those little inefficiencies are what emotionless computers take advantage of."
"When BTC went from $17K to $3K 86% of the people never sold it. Here’s something with a finite supply and 86% of the owners are religious zealots. Who the hell holds something through $17,000 to $3000?"
"The RenTech team views the narratives that most investors latch onto to explain price moves as quaint, even dangerous, because they breed misplaced confidence that an investment can be adequately understood and its futures divined."
"The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting is 40,000 people who consider themselves contrarians. They wait in line at 4 am with thousands of others and discuss their lifelong commitment to not following the crowd. Pluralistic ignorance at its finest."
“If there was a strategy that I would want to employ right now, if someone put a gun to my head, I’d say simple trend-following strategies. They are not too popular today. They will probably do very well in the next 5-10 years.”
Thank you,
@Covel
"He made a fortune buying stocks that most felt were too expensive, completely detaching himself from Wall St, and by staying true to one system and trading it religiously. Pay attention to the character of your stocks, not the character of the indices."
“This rogue wave that I was unable to navigate has likely cost me my hedge fund. You were my family and I’m sorry that this rogue wave capsized our boat."
There is no rogue wave to blame. Countertrend trading always fails eventually.
"Trend-following performs as well as equities in the long term, is lowly correlated, has better risk-management properties, and generally works well when equities don’t. What’s not to like?"
"I own commodities, hard assets, and cash. The GSCI is at one of its lowest points in history vs fins. That has historically been resolved by commodities putting on a stunner of a show, stoking inflation. I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened again."
How do you feel about your backtest now? Feel good about analyzing the past 30, 40, 50 years of market data?
"But the market had never done that before."
#crude
"Missing a trade is a much more serious error than making a bad trade. If you make a bad trade you have the [stop loss.] However, if you miss a good trade there is nowhere to turn. If you miss good trades with any regularity you’re finished."
@SJosephBurns
The robustness of a trading system is proportional to its volatility.
"The more robust a system, the more volatile it tends to be! This is because robust systems are not optimized to particular markets or market conditions. The converse is also true."
"I'm a sore loser I don't like to lose. I compounded a little bit over 30% net a year for 30 years. I had a lot of five and sevens in there. I didn't make 20-30% every year, it was a matter of never losing and throwing some big numbers in there, maybe 10 times."
“When Ackman went on TV to tearfully warn that “hell is coming” he was knee deep in a bet against the markets that netted him $2.6B. “It looks like a hell of a trade. I guess Bill was crying on TV for a lot of reasons. Tears of joy.””
trend following rules should be based on breakouts or moving averages (for instance) not trade/portfolio P/L or volatility. trust me. don't listen to the traders who have the most AUM. haha.
trend following success requires us to strictly follow the system rules. thinking about whether a market is still in a trend, the strength of the trend, relative strength, and patterns are used as reasons to not strictly follow rules. it's all noise until your signal is elected.
WorldQuant has about 1,000 research consultants from around the globe looking for so-called alphas, signals that predict price movements. It also employs 493 investing professionals who work full time at the firm, according to the people.
My trend following entries are not good predictors - 60+% losing trades. My trend following exits aren't good predictors either. I can be short system 1, long system 2 in the same market. After I exit I frequently have to get back in at the highs. And my system isn't broken!
"Backtesting is not a research tool. If a strategy does not perform well in a backtest, do not tweak it (overfit) until the backtest looks good." - Marcos Lopez de Prado
Thank you, Bruno Neri
"Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems. They did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system."
"Hedge fund Winton is suffering one of its worst runs on record after its stance against simple trend-following appeared to backfire. The fund is on track for its worst calendar year in its 22-year history."
"Perhaps the most famous trading experiment ever conducted was when the commodities trader Richard Dennis trained a group of amateurs – the Turtles -- to be successful futures traders. The Turtles compiled an impressive record, handing Dennis a win."
I don’t think a trend following strategy will work well without a commitment to only using a strict set of rules - one entry, one exit & a stop loss. TF + discretion or funnymentals ruins the strategy.
Announcing the Launch of the : The Rise of the Outlier Hunters
This innovative Index distinguishes itself from others by exclusively focusing on traditional trend following methodologies, standing apart from indices that incorporate a broader spectrum of
"It shouldn’t work, yet the record is robust. The momentum factor has proven robust over 200 years, out of sample and across markets and geographies. Roughly, it may deliver a return about 10% higher than the market per year, based on history."
“People who shorted the internet in 1998 were right, but they went broke before they could collect any winnings. One of the problems with it, if you believe it’s a bubble, it can go on for a long time.” Zealotry of both sides.
“Sugar turns on the aging programs in your body. The more sugar you eat, the faster you age.” The case against sugar is as strong as the case against smoking or excess alcohol.
"Since the program’s inception in 1999, the system has never been overridden,”
Mulvaney returned about 89% in 2022. From 1999 through the end of August annualized gains have been 16.4%. The S&P 500 is ~+7% annually over the same period.
The willingness to allow the current trade's P/L to be determined by the system's rules and not try to stop the pain is a necessary and rare quality. It's an illusion that discretionary moves can enhance performance. The current trade seems very important, but it's not.
"I think it’s no coincidence that our greatest champions, our greatest leaders, our greatest everything all seem to have experienced some kind of gut-wrenching loss. I think their greatness, in part, was fashioned on the crucible of defeat."
"Stop optimizing for today or tomorrow and start playing the long game. That means being less efficient in the short term but more effective in the long term."
Trend Following contributes to smoother returns over time. When added to a traditional port, performance stabilizes and achieves higher risk-adjusted RORs. It seems to have the most pos effect when allocating 20-50% of the portfolio to it.
@TheIntrepidLLC
"In studying successful traders, the word consistency pops up a lot. They don't change their spots all the time. It's best to develop a relatively simple robust model that will survive various future realities waiting for the luck to find you."
Ty G.C.
I can't remember having more fun on a podcast or interview than I had with
@kevinmuir
on
@TheMarketHuddle
. Thank you,
@bigpictrading
too. Next time we'll need to talk some about our love of wine.
"Numerous studies have shown that increasing information leads to increased overconfidence rather than increased accuracy. Overconfidence is such a big killer of investment returns."
We don't predict we really let it run, let it rip and we don't manage the volatility around it. People who live in a Sharpe ratio world where tails don't exist by definition always want to rebalance and vol control and do risk management trades to bring that return distribution
Risk = I try to limit my losses to ~25 bps of AUM and ~60% of my trades are losses.
Volatility = I'll let my open profits retrace hundreds of bps.
Feel free to translate that into something more complicated.
Volatility, in and of itself, is not risk; the risk is with the uncertainty in the thing that moves. If my stock goes down, will it recover the same amount? That depends on the stock, or the company, not its volatility.
Volatility is the messenger. Don't shoot the messenger.
“LTCM's basic error was believing its models were truth. We never believed our models reflected reality—just some aspects of reality.”
From the group that creates the best models.
"Raising the min wage for tipped workers will slash my employees’ income—because I’ll have to fire them. My employees
actually make more money from a sale than I do. I earn 5% on each customer check, while they earn 20% or more of the check in tips."
Clients don't need CTA crisis alpha. They need to have their stocks traded with trend following so that there will be fewer crises. Trading strategies that don’t use stop losses, trailing stops, price trends as an input and don't take advantage of max diversification and shorts,
How CTAs evolve:
#1
vol and correl management, DPS
cutting profits short
no stop losses
beholden to Sharpe
neg skew strats
2&20
#2
Increased diversification, 100s of stocks, 100s of futures: FX FI crypto and commodities
Loose pants
Trend following + nothing
ETF
"After many years of analyzing trend-following, I have concluded that there is also another impossible trilemma: it is impossible to have a high annualized return, a high win rate, and a low drawdown at the same time."
"One of the reasons I retired is clients do not have the mental ability to allow sound techniques to produce profits over the long run. The want profits now and cannot handle the risks of letting things play out."
@basso_tom
"Pretty much all of trading can be summarized into 2 groups: you can either be a momentum player or one who detects shifts in momentum and tries to go against momentum just before it changes. So, all of trading is built around momentum or anti-momentum."
Managed futures ≠ trend following. MF tries to manage the volatility, the correlations, the profits, the drawdowns, i.e., manage the future.
Trend followers hunt outliers.
Surround yourself with people that push you to do and be better. No drama or negativity. Just higher goals and higher motivation. Good times and positive energy. No jealousy or hate. Simply bringing out the absolute best in each other.
"Trading for a living is not an ideal way to earn $ and it's a sublime way to ruin your life & embed yourself into a permanent state of frantic misery. Opt for LT cap appreciation for the sake of your own sanity and quality of life."
Bad day in the market
"You're coming out of a nine year commodity bear market. We should see 100-300% returns in total commodities over the next 18-36 mos. This is the window where commodities are explosive is under-investment with material demand coming back."
AI: There is a common rule used by many investors that defines a bull/bear market as a rise/decline of 20% or more in a major stock index, such as the S&P 500.
I think it would be better to use a long term breakout to define bulls and bears. What do you think?
"If your view of the world is that people use reason for their important decisions, you are setting yourself up for a life of frustration and confusion. Few things are as destructive and limiting as a worldview that assumes people are mostly rational."
I'll get out of this drawdown the same way I got in it - doing all of the systems' trades. There is no acceptable substitute. I would do the same trades all over again!
"There is a trend following strategy ETF that is about to launch in the US. I love the ticker. It’s $TFPN which stands for Trend Following + Nothing. My screen game is 'Rob TFPE Carver' where the E stands for everything because I'm a bit more pragmatic than some."
The Blueprint Chesapeake Multi-Asset Trend ETF $TFPN has reached $50 million in assets under management in less than three months of trading.
@Blueprint_IP
@ChesapeakeTweet
Don't only buy any of the markets, even stocks. Use them for your own purposes. Buy them, short them, and ignore them but don't ever commit to any of them. They can't be trusted. Don't become emotionally invested in a market. That's what it is for many stock and crypto lovers.
market price action (like today's) is not a good indication of what's to come nor is it a good guide to what we should do - unless it triggered one of our trading entry/exit rules. our rules are the only thing worth paying any attention to.
proper, honest trading is hard. letting profits run is very hard and it's a big edge. but it's not a zero sum game. the markets can handle any number of traders who are willing to let their profits run. the rewards pie is not fixed. it's ever expanding to accommodate all.
I'm always shocked at how much investors "believe in" a stock, as if it's been there for them - through thick and thin. Stocks are not our friends or our leaders, they are just odds for placing our bets.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
-Nietzsche
Asness: It does sound childishly simple, but in trend-following we’ve just been doing a lot more things, more esoteric securities. The best example is alternative commodities such as milk, coal or my personal favourite, Malaysian palm oil. It turns out if you do a vast number of
AQR's "findings suggest that trend following's lower returns in the current decade are due to fewer large moves across markets over this time period, as opposed to a decline in the strategy’s ability to profit from trends."
"A momentum-based investing approach can be confusing to investors who are often told that “chasing performance” is a massive mistake and “timing the market” is impossible."
"I could trade without knowing the name of the market." — Richard Dennis
Knowing the name and the market's history can have a negative influence on proper trading.
"The most rigorous randomized trials provided no evidence that eating less fat, including saturated, had an impact on mortality or cardiovascular outcomes. Low-fat diets have largely fallen out of favor among health authorities in recent yrs."
@Mangan150
“Of our most costly mistakes over the years, almost all have been sell decisions. The mistake, in virtually every instance, has been selling too soon.”
value and fundamental “sell rules” can’t outperform trend sell rules.
"It's very different when you're risking your principal than when you're risking your profit. That's how you get these runs, you get it right, and you can risk more and make more money. Risking your profit is much easier."
Thank you,
@MikeWShell
Exciting news from within the Blueprint family of companies! Blueprint Chesapeake Multi-Asset Fund ETF (ticker: $TFPN) has surpassed $100m in AUM (as of 6/12/2024). TFPN is sub-advised as a partnership between
@rjpjr12
and his team at Chesapeake and Blueprint Fund Management.
A one-entry, one-exit, stop-loss trend following strategy should out perform more “parameter rich” strategies just as the S&P beats most active strategies. Sharpe props up the less robust strategies.
“It’s not an argument about being bullish or bearish but about not needing to have a market opinion. Automating your investments frees you from the shackles of worrying about what the market does next. 2020 showed that predicting the future is impossible.”
"The Turtle trading system itself is still valid. These trend following systems with only a few parameters, entry, hard stop, and trailing stop are universally applicable across markets and robust because of the limited number of parameters."
@RichB118
"Trend following is a painful strategy because you can be underwater for a few yrs. You may be forced by investors to change things although for the long term nothing has changed. This is a challenge but there's resilience in the successful CTAs who've been around for many yrs."
“If you learn to control your ego, you can pick strategies that scare off the people who fear embarrassment. And if you stay in the game long enough, luck has a better chance of finding you.”
"If I have positions going against me, I get right out. I always believe that prices move first and fundamentals come second. My metric for everything I look at is the 200-day moving average of closing prices.”
"The Turtle Traders, the folks out of Chicago and all that, were oriented toward breakout systems and they had a particular way of doing things. The European CTAs tend to use a smoother and more continuous form of momentum in most places, and that's generally better behaved."
"I did my PhD on rules and heuristics that investors use to make decisions. It became clear to me that trend following is one of the greatest rules-based trading strategies. I was interested in how do you disentangle decision from emotion?"