What are the recent performance figures for Vishnu's fund Mr Hankey? Just for the curious... PS. You done selling his book
I wish you and Vishnu would address the questions that the posters of this thread have brought up instead of rejecting them outright. Second, Surf, I have no dog in this fight. I do not trade a trend following methodology and I don't care who care does. I don't care if Vic sells naked puts. I don't care if you use neogann channels. I just find it arrogant as hell that someone, anyone, would dismiss a strategy because it had a poor year. What about Vic, should we dismiss his strategy because of 1987 or 1998 or 2001? I don't think we should. But according to your argument and Vishnu, we should dismiss Vic as a charlatan, a phony, a fraud. Personally, I do not believe in system trading. But you know what, there are guys out there that seem to swear by it. I'm not going to write a book calling for the end of system trading. My problem with the author of this book is not what he is saying, but how he is saying it. It's the arrogance that I take issue with. The author claims because a handful of the more well known names in the trend following field had large drawdowns, that the entire strategy is worthless despite the fact there are countless number of trend following funds having record years.
Altucher's fund management company had assets under management of $55,600,000 in 2005 as listed on the form ADV. Nothing to sneeze at. I would love to be in a position like his someday. I think Altucher is an inquisitive market thinker who is undoubtedly successful. You don't generally stay around real long in the hedge fund business if you don't provide value to your partners.
An interesting discussion. I think the point long term trend following methods that apply similar methodologies to those the original turtles used under Dennis aren't working as well as they used to in the 80s and before is a fair point. However, to say trend following is dead is simply untrue. There are many different ways to play a trend depending on your risk tolerance and investment time horizon. There are even ways to trade a trend that don't require a lot of risk or drawdown. All markets trend and will trend, just not all at the same time nor to the same degree of reliabilty. The nature of markets hasn't really changed at all. Yes, there are more players. However, there were more players in the 60s than the 20s and so on. Does that mean the markets were different in the 60s than the 20s in the way they behaved? Still, humans trading it. In my view, the fundamental behaviour remains the same, just the magnitude of moves changes over time. My view of the market is it has been a good time recently for trends, although that doesn't necessarily mean trend followers as I am not sure of their methodologies. A nice uptrend even on the S&P500 since October 2005. Some good trends in gold, Nikkei, Platinum and Orange Juice to name a few markets that have trended well recently. As always with the market, there is lots of opportunity out there for trend followers.
Maybe I should pose my argument a different way: Would I allocate money to trend following funds right now? Absolutely not. I've been saying this in writing since 2003 and the results of the major trend followers have proven me correct. Would I recommend someone start a trendfollowing fund? No. I think that strategies that are not just "hot" but have withstood the test of time are activist investing, asset-backed lending, PIPES, and a few others that I've mentioned in my books. Buffett has been doing the above strategies for 50 years and has barely had a down year, let alone a drawdown of 60% or more that many of these guys suffer through. And many other billionaires have been minted with the above techniques. As to what my credentials are to say this? Probably none. Do your own research. Don't even buy my lousy books. Read other books that are much better. And if you want to put all your money in Henry's funds then fine, do it. I have no skin in that game either.
Whether or not a hedge fund category exists as a viable strategy is whether or not the allocators deem them to be viable. I can tell you that the fund of funds do not want to allocate to the trend followers after 2004-2005. I know a trend follower personally. He has a great track record over 20 years but in the mid 1990's when the allocated money pulled out and went to stocks he survived only by pursuing other lines of business and managing money for just a few individuals. The money came back in 2003-2004 but believe me, the funds of funds are starting to withdraw capital from this stragtegy subset. The argument isn't whether or not all trend following funds will shut down but whether or not it will be considered a viable hedge fund category into the future.