DUNN Capital is up +55% for 08. Does that mean he will continue straight up? No. Does it reinforce that he has his niche of the world of trading figured out and has been doing it successfully for over 30 years? It appears so.
Ha! I knew when I saw DUNN Capital in Wall Street News it must be from Covel. DUNN had a good run from the 70's. They've had a rough patch since 2003. Their AUM got cleaned out last summer. Hopefully they can continue to make a comeback. I wish them all the best.
Dunn Composite five years of negative performance in a row (2003-2007). Amazing they still have almost $300mln in AUM.
He adopted a strategy years ago that was never going to work with the typical allocator. He is a cowboy in that sense. What's cool is to see him stick to his guns for three decades and still be winning.
Ehm, his composite YTD return would be around 37% quickly estimated. Making 37% after losing 38% the previous five years still leaves you 15% in the hole. Not to mention the opportunity loss. With all respect, making 3% per annum in the 1998-2007 period doesn't exactly make you a star performer in my book.
Compared to the track record of my fellow countrymen at TransTrend he looks like a wild cowboy with less respect for risk and less return to boot.
TransTrend are good no doubt, but in hindsight most people would have taken Dunn's 30 year track record. That is not an attempt to say he is the best, but his performance is noteworthy. Of course, most people would take TransTrend's record in hindsight too.
2008 so far has seen the biggest clean one-way trend in futures markets since 1980. Any trend-follower should be up big, since this is literally the perfect market environment for that style. It's kinda like being a tech stock momentum investor in late 1999 - if you aren't killing it right now, you need to find a new line of work. So IMO any trend follower making big returns right now is totally meaningless. I say this as someone who is pretty much maxed out long commodities. There is no point being up 50% during the mega-trends once per decade, if you bleed money for years during the chop. I'm interested in the guys who grinded out returns in the last few years, and are also capitalising on the big moves recently. Also, the size of their returns tells me they are taking reckless risk. I've been 100% long a basket of commodities since the start of the year, literally every market I've bought has gone up massively, and I'm not up the same as Dunn. From their returns I'd wager they have been at least 200% long. That is a reckless level of risk IMO.
Agreed. I have part of my portfolio invested in trend following strategy. It takes a fair amount of risk (although stand alone quite acceptable and as part of 6 strategies very much so). The trend following portfolio is up 56% ytd. And it's nothing smart either, just plain LT trend following (and almost all long commodities and currencies ).