I talked to one. He said it would be much cheaper if I found some examples to replicate. Thanx though. I'll keep looking. You've really been a saint on all this in finding info.
Aaron, congrats on a really amazing July. Don't worry about Aug. It's behind us now. I know hardly anyone who made much money last month. It was way too thin in equities at least. I assume it was very "summery" in the futs as well. Keep up the good trading. Thanx again for everything. I'm still working on my fund documents (still), but hope to have it all up and going by new years.
Thanks, P2! The Schindler Fund has now completed its first year of operation with a nice positive return for the year. If our second year is half as profitable I'll be pretty excited. I'll be interested to see your fund documents when you have them.
Hi Aaron, I see your results as a CTA are tracked and published every once in awhile. Do you need to register as a CTA or does the CPO registration with the NFA get you on the list as well? I have a pooled account at Interactive Brokers with funds from 8 individual investors totaling under $200,000, and would like to have our performance tracked as yours is (for the publicity in case I want to gather a couple million down the road). What at a minimum would I need to do? We traded stocks until last month when we switched to trading only the emini's. I understand I need to file a letter stating why we are exempt from registration with the NFA, but is there anything else I should do? Thanks a lot, and good job with your fund.
There are many firms that keep a database of hedge fund, commodity pool, and commodity trading advisor (CTA) results. Some of these database companies are Barclay Group, Cogent Hedge, Hedgefund.net, Investorforce.com, etc. What their listing requirements are is up to them. They might require you to be registered or they might require you to have a certain amount of assets, or they might not. Contact the database administrator you are interested in. Whose name is that account at IB in? To be a commodity pool it should not be in your name but in the name of the commodity pool. You should form a limited partnership or LLC. Get a tax ID number from the IRS, and open the account in the name of the pool. Then keep good records and you'll have an auditable record of your returns.
Aaron, I'm doing my returns now finally myself as I have a few extra hours this weekend. Does it matter at all how long it's been between periods that I'm calculating between when I had inflows or outflows? Sometimes it's as little at like 10 days. Can I just use that previous % calculation that you showed me and will it take care of it all? ((1+%performance) X (1+%performance) X (1+%performance))-1
Yes. When you are compounding your return across "breakpoints" you will use the %performance for each period. You'll have a breakpoint whenever there is an inflow or outflow. And then you'll also have a breakpoint at the beginning and end of your period. For example, the Schindler Fund has a breakpoint at every month-end whether there is an inflow/outflow or not. Even if your period is only 10 days long your %performance for that period will be (market value at end of period)/(market value at beginning of period)-1. Then use your formula to compound all the period returns.