ETs, Does anyone have any information on the RQSI/Access Emerging CTA Index (ECI) Fund and their CTA Star Search program? Any and all information is greatly appreciated.
Well, Schindler Trading is one of the 57 CTA's managing a portion of the ECI Fund. What would you like to know? Have you been to www.accessasset.com? There's also a link to the August ECI Fund newsletter. If you read the website and the newsletter you'll know just about everything I do about the ECI Fund. I don't know much about their CTA Star Search. As an ECI manager we aren't eligible to compete.
Thanks Aaron, I am particularly interested in their selection process. What are their requirements for receiving an allocation? Minimum assets under management, minimum track record? What does their due diligence process entail? Also since you are in the ECI fund, how do you view them as an investor - especially how do they react during drawdown periods? Did your inclusion in the ECI Fund attract more investors to your Fund? Do they invest in Funds or require you to have a managed account and if they require managed accounts - do they mandate a specific clearing broker and trading execution software? I see that for Star Search, traders are required to use their tradepipe platform. Is that what you use to execute for them? Thanks a lot.
I recommend you ask them about their selection criteria. Due to client confidentiality I'm not going to be able to tell you anything that isn't publicly available and I haven't seen anything public on their selection criteria. With the ECI fund, managers are automatically kicked out of the index if they have a drawdown that exceeds a certain set size. Other than that possibility, Ramsey Financial doesn't do anything differently when a manager is in a drawdown. Ramsey Financial doesn't give out the names of the ECI managers, so no Schindler Trading investors have found us through them. The ECI allocation did give Schindler Trading a big boost in assets under management, perhaps that cachet and knowing that Ramsey Financial has done some due dilligence on us makes people more comfortable with investing with Schindler Trading. We trade a separate account for the ECI Fund and execute through Tradepipe. Tradepipe (owned by Ramsey Financial) is a good IB and their Tradepipe platform is excellent. Good luck in the Star Search if you enter!