The goal of this article is to illustrate how seemingly inconsequential changes to the trading mechanics of a strategy, which have little impact on the long-term expected performance, can have a material impact on results in the short-term.
It is widely accepted among investment professionals that, while portfolio optimization has compelling theoretical merit, it is not useful in practice. Practitioners are concerned that optimization is an “error maximizing” ¹ process fraught with insurmountable estimation issues.
The true benefit of trend following is only realized when investors take advantage of the extreme liquidity and diversity of global futures markets to trade a wide range of markets across all major asset categories. Our analysis shows that an investor would have achieved more than double the risk-adjusted performance of a median equity trend strategy by trading a diversified strategy across many diverse markets.
Last week we were jazzed to have Dr. Kathryn Kaminski deliver a comprehensive presentation on Managed Futures Trend Following: The Ultimate Diversifier, where she covered the role of convergent and divergent strategies, and introduced other important themes like:
The article below illustrates how capital efficiency, taxes, and fees impact portfolio choices given what we feel to be reasonable assumptions. However, we recognize that you may have different views on these variables.
Adaptive Asset Allocation mandates targeting a volatility closer to the long-term profile of global equities (16%-20%) produced almost double the return of U.S. stocks, with some mandates achieving over 40% return.
ReSolve Asset Management Blog is an investment research forum, opinion pieces, and educational material from the team at ReSolve Asset Management. Our views are driven by evidence based finance, with a special focus on asset allocation, factors and smart beta, retirement and endowment strategies, and quantitative methods.
