Where do you see he is down 6.6% for the year? I'm just trying to figure out where everyone is pulling these numbers from. Last I saw, he is no longer reporting to Barclay's database.
Check Barclay's today. Manchester's equity curve looks remarkably similar as I guess they are running very similar strategies.
Barclays has it. His fund is Matador under managed futures. He has been reportedly selling SP puts, but with Vic you just never know. He says all kinds of things so you never really know what to believe. I will say this, he has taken his lumps this second go-round in months where the market has dropped, so it would seem logical that he's heavily short puts. In April 05 we dropped 45 on the SP in the days leading up to expiry and he was down about 12% or so - from what I remember. The next month he got it all back and more, so I'm surmising he just rolled down. In May, we got a bit more volatile relative to recent history. Looking back 15-20 years though, this was really nothing. At the end of the month, the VIX still hadn't seen 20 and the SP was only down 3%. Given Vic's drubbing, I have to wonder what in the world he's doing over there? Is he THAT close to the money? If so, a 15% (SP) down month may take him out entirely. Are they short term trading (as he mentioned in a recent article) and they just got on the wrong side of something? I would love to know.
Vic's true gift to the trading world is showing how one can benefit from the noise through scientific methods. Since he is almost always short gamma, when there is signal or a tide, he can get hurt. His comments are often sarcastic and tongue in cheek. You really need to read between the lines to decipher the message. That being said, Matador is one helluva competitor. In May Matador was down 28 percent, but last year they were up 50 something percent with barely a drawdown, if memory serves me correctly.
Again, I have a soft-spot for Vic and was delighted to see him win the MAPA award in April, but I mean why this love for short gamma positions. Down 28% in one month ...there wasn't even a market crash! Come on Vic! Fat tail cat, when you say he's a heluva competitor what do you mean. Do you run an options fund??
Speaking of gamma. "Also, you should never be short gamma. I've become very anti any kind of short gamma trade. That includes carry trades, which in my mind are essentially synthetic short gamma trades. I'm a great believer that portfolios in the macro space should always be long gamma, not short. Never, ever be short gamma." --Christian Siva-Jothy, Inside the House of Money Bwahaha.
When I made my comment above, I though of Christian's quote. That quote was the most poignant quote in that book for me. It confirmed something, I've always intuitively felt in my heart.
nope, just an observer. Vic is a premier empiricist, that's why he loves to short gamma. Hats off to the practicing empiricists out there, because they are way ahead of 90% of the crowd, but with one caveat: beware of the logic behind the empiricism.
As you wisely hint, the problem with empircism is that many atimes it is pronged upon fallacies that are iimprudently held as cardinal truths. Thus, I doubt if they are "way ahead of 90% of the crowd" as you state. Why do you think so. proturf, you are here , if you read this why don't you chime in!