That's not true. Global macro guys have historically had very little correlation to passive equities.
I don't get it. Macro offers the widest range of opportunities with sufficient liquidity to go long or short. It's not large-cap Japanese equities strategy with 100% invested and no hedging allowed constraints where you're at a mercy of broad market movements or Swiss STIR trading where market is essentially dead (still I would not blame SNB because keeping swiss STIR traders employed is not part of their mandate). Single theme, binary betting on global risk-on/risk-off and saying this year it's risk-on suggests lack of creativity. Likewise, trend followers should find stuff that trends. If they cannot do it and blame it on range-bound markets, then why should client give them money instead of buying OTM options that would do well in a big trend? There is a lot more value in recognizing a trend than implementing a trade within a trend. In Eclectica case it's hard to believe that investors bullied the fund into running negative correlation and losing money on purpose in bull markets. If they were bullish on equities, why did they lose 9.8% YTD anyway?
There maybe a wide range of products but not a wide range of opportunities. Most global macro guys are clustered in the same trades. Trend followers have the opposite problem. They are usually in many trades at the same time. The problem there is the bad ones usually offset the good ones in a choppy market. I'm attaching below the Barclay Global Macro Index which is a composite of 109 global macro funds. As you can see, not very sexy.
A final warning from Hugh Hendry – inflation is coming http://moneyweek.com/hugh-hendry-how-to-invest-inflation-is-coming/