I also enjoyed Aaron's posts when he use to be here on ET. He was very intelligent and gave us ideas on how he backtested his strategies. Unfortunately, the market went out of norms and had numbers that his mean reversion systems couldn't handle. After the Schindler Fund experienced a -52% January, he closed the fund to new investors and opened his new IEP fund. The IEP is current down around 40% as of today. "return since inception (3/1/08) -39.8%" It really suprises me if someone with his intelligence and experience has trouble outperforming the market, what chance do us investors/traders have.
His fund is very narrowly benchmarked to the eafa long core posiiton which he is still beating net of fees. Looks very difficult to to greatly outperform given his objective and strategy in this market especially with a small fund where a large redemption can be a game changer.
thanks jsmith for bringing us up to date on his Performance a reminder,a 50% drawdown requires a 100% return to break even.
What's everyone acting so shocked about? If one is only going long and is fully invested, his performance is not surprising. Only staying on the sidelines or shorting or going long an inverse fund could realistically have provided superior returns in our current environment.
Many market wizards have already pointed out intelligence and experience have nothing to do with your performance!
I was not aware that he HAD TO BE in the market all the time fully invested. Also, wasn't he into natural gas or oil earlier? I thought he would catch the big run up in oil. I don't see why investors would DEMAND that a fund (specially a small fund) needs to be in a market all the time, when clearly this year shows that cash can be king in hard times. I think fundmanagers overcomplicate this investing game. That's why I came up with a rather simple idea how to outperform the market in the simplest way possible. If I could show you guys. Wait! I actually have a live journal on ET for the last 3 years and trading it live I handsomely outperformed the market 3 years in a row. This year my journal is up 8% so far. I know, it is not real money, but it shows the strategy live how it works....And my timing is admitedly average...Nevertheless I was able to let the market fall without me being long quite a few times.
If you read the description of the EIP fund then you would know its objectives. http://www.schindlertrading.com/index.php?page=trading_program Its really irrelevant what investors would demand of other funds/managers. He created a fund that is primarily designed to track the EAFE index so its not surprising that his fund is down with that index. He does not have the latitude to simply stop tracking the index and go to cash because then it wouldn't be following its core principle.