Wasn't one of SAC's top trader's wife Holly B. Becker, a Lehman Analyst, get caught with her hand in the cookie jar?
SAC is the MOST heavily scrutinized and watched fund on earth. Do you really think this is normal course of business and he could get away with it, again and again, in the spotlight of regulators? people want to bring SAC down, ever wonder why it never happens if all this illegal, shady stuff is going on?? get real. surf
no offense, and i apprieciate your posts, but cherry picking 6 funds from 1000's in the so called trend following genre--and extrapolating that its a good method for traders to follow is simply fallacious. surf
I'd like to know what the actual stats show ... saying that there only six funds out of thousands that have outsize results is as spurious and mis-informing as saying that trend trading is great because here are these six funds that show trend traders can be successful.
my opinion would be: a fairly even distribution of winners and losers as some trend funds will be short, others will be long--some making money, some losing money. but they ALL seem to hold onto losses too long and are married to positions and their biases--regardless of what the market is telling them. some will pull it off, others will crash and burn. what time frames in history one looks at also has a large impact on the results of the survivors. remember the losers simply stop reporting, so its very hard to get the real stats. too hot in the city today to even be at the pool surf surf
You know there's always people who say - value investing - scalping - quant trading - trend following - etc. "does not work". All I see is that - over long enough time periods- there are some that make it, and many that fail... in all of the above disciplines. Are they just lucky, statistical flukes, 10 sigma events, freaks of chance? Sure, possible. But in all honesty, not very likely. Success and failure always occur next to one another, just like in any brick and mortar business. For every 1 that makes it you have 100 going broke. But are successful businesses the product of random chance only? Or did most of them have a competitive advantage (=trading edge) that helped them overcome the odds?
good points, i concur. however, the edge that is required to make it is not "trend following" in the commonly accepted understanding of the term. surf
Funny you telling me to get real when all you do is spew incorrect information. I now understand why you aren't a trader and are only a journalist. If you dont believe there is manipulation on wall street then I have a large bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. Here is something very real... S.E.C. Is Advised to Take Action Against Couple E-MAIL Print Single-Page Save Share DiggFacebookMixxYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy GRETCHEN MORGENSON Published: April 24, 2003 Officials in the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission have recommended that it file an insider trading suit against a former Wall Street analyst, Holly B. Becker, and her husband, Michael J. Zimmerman, a professional stock trader who has worked at several large hedge funds, according to a person involved in the investigation. The full commission is expected to decide Tuesday whether to file suit against Ms. Becker and Mr. Zimmerman, the person said. Regulators have been investigating stock trades made by Mr. Zimmerman from 1999 to 2001 that appear to have been based on information he received from Ms. Becker while she was a prominent analyst at Salomon Smith Barney and later at Lehman Brothers. The S.E.C. notified Ms. Becker and Mr. Zimmerman last summer that it had gathered enough evidence to bring an enforcement action against them. As is customary, they then told the regulators why they did not believe an enforcement action was merited. The commission's investigation into Mr. Zimmerman and Ms. Becker, according to the person involved in it, has identified a series of trades he made in three stocks in 1999, when he was employed by Omega Advisors Inc., a hedge fund in New York. According to the person, Ms. Becker provided Mr. Zimmerman with advance information about the contents of research reports that were soon to be published on Avon Products, eBay and Drugstore.com. Mr. Zimmerman then made bets on the shares based on whether those reports were positive or negative, the person said, adding that Mr. Zimmerman's trades were quickly closed out and produced several million dollars in profits to the fund. Omega Advisors is not a subject of the investigation. Mr. Zimmerman worked there for one year; he left in January 2000 to join SAC Capital Advisors, a hedge fund with offices in Connecticut and New York. The commission has also scrutinized trades made by Mr. Zimmerman when he worked at SAC, but those trades are not part of the case now before regulators. Mr. Zimmerman did not return a phone call seeking comment. Ms. Becker's lawyer, David E. Brodsky, of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York, also did not return a phone call. Mr. Brodsky represented both Ms. Becker and Mr. Zimmerman last year, but Mr. Zimmerman has since retained separate counsel. The S.E.C. does not comment on the status of its investigations. In Avon Products and eBay, Mr. Zimmerman sold shares short, betting that they would fall, according to the person involved in the inquiry. Both stocks declined shortly after Mr. Zimmerman sold the shares short, when negative research reports were released. The eBay report was written by Ms. Becker when she was employed at Salomon Smith Barney. Ms. Becker worked at Salomon twice: from 1993 to 1998 and then again from September 1999 to March 2000. But the report on Avon Products that Mr. Zimmerman apparently had access to, according to the person involved, was written by Wendy Nicholson, an analyst at Salomon who had been a colleague of Ms. Becker during her first stint there. Ms. Nicholson viewed Ms. Becker as a mentor, the person said, and asked for her opinion on a report she had written but not yet published in which she downgraded Avon shares. Ms. Becker, who was working at Jennison Associates, a money management firm, passed along the contents of the report to Mr. Zimmerman, the person said. Ms. Nicholson did not return a phone call seeking comment. Mr. Zimmerman bought shares of Drugstore.com, the person said, shortly before Ms. Becker wrote a positive note on that company while she was an analyst at Salomon. If Ms. Becker shared the contents of unpublished research with her husband and he profited by trading on the information, her actions could be a breach of fiduciary duty to her firm and its clients, said Lewis D. Lowenfels, an authority in securities law at Tolins & Lowenfels in New York. Such an exchange of nonpublic information could also violate the rules of NASD and the New York Stock Exchange, which require their members to adhere to high standards and equitable principles of trade. S.E.C. Is Advised to Take Action Against Couple E-MAIL Print Single-Page Save Share DiggFacebookMixxYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy GRETCHEN MORGENSON Published: April 24, 2003 If the S.E.C. decides to file suit against Mr. Zimmerman and Ms. Becker, it would be a civil securities fraud case. If Mr. Zimmerman used material nonpublic information to make profitable trades for himself or his firm, he could also be held criminally liable for misappropriating material and nonpublic information for his own use, securities lawyers said. At the time of the questionable trades identified by the S.E.C., Ms. Becker and Mr. Zimmerman were not married. They married in August 2000 when Ms. Becker was an Internet analyst at Lehman Brothers. She was suspended by the firm last June when she was notified of the possible enforcement action by the S.E.C. Omega Advisors is run by Leon G. Cooperman, a hedge fund manager who started Omega in 1991 after a long and successful career at Goldman Sachs. Mr. Cooperman, a Goldman partner, was chairman of the firm's asset management division until he left to start the fund. He declined to comment on the possible case against Mr. Zimmerman.