Congrats to Aaron for a great Feb! I do agree with Pabst. But I think the drawdows would be 1/2 of the max drawdown now since Aaron reduced his volatility of his program.
Thanks Surfer, Jay, Indahook, Thunderdog, Uptil, Winter, Pepper John, Quenkish, and Waterloo! Yes, all reported returns are net of all expenses and fees and are what the investors actually earn. The gross returns are higher. Schindler Trading has plenty of capacity (that a euphemism for "we're tiny" ) AUM = $2.3m Yes, Pabst, the 50% drawdown in '04 was ridiculous. While we've had a 125% runup since then, I still don't care to relive the experience. Last April we cut our leverage in half to reduce the chance of a recurrence. Aaron Schindler Schindler Trading
Aaron, I always follow your posts with great interest. Congratulations on your success - you deserve it! Would you care to share the following, if they are not confidential. 1) You have mentioned the markets you trade in various interviews etc. Do you trade multiple strategies in one instrument? Maybe end up with one strategy short NQ and one long NQ? 2) How many strategies are you running? 3) Why not trade ER2? Me, I can never make money trading NQ 4) Any advises for greenhorn fund manager wannabes? 5) Ummm - do you charge 2/20? Thanks!
A transparent program conducted in the standards of the industry. Managers like Shindler are offering a program where you know what you get. No BS, no phoney glamour, smoke and mirrors and images or perceptions of something else. It is the real deal and will prevail. Congrats.
Thanks Darth and Ellokn! We certainly use multiple indicators per market, but they are all combined into a single "strategy". But it kind of comes down to semantics... You could call the different indicators, different "strategies" and say our net position is the result of combining these strategies, or you could say we have just one strategy with multiple indicators. Would you say there is a difference? Yes, the ER2 (Russell 2000) is a great market. It has been especially strong on the long side and has outperformed other indices this year (and over the last couple years). The most recent market we've started trading is the Singapore Exchange Nikkei contract. Also, I think we are going to switch from the NYMEX miNY crude to the ICE crude contract (symbol: WTI at Interactive Brokers). The ICE contract is twice the size and has, like, a third the exchange fees. About advice for greenhorn fund managers... Certainly I'm in no position to give advice on raising assets. I was hoping that good results would speak for themselves and the assets would just find us, but that isn't the case. We're up 250% over 4.5 years and still have plenty of capacity. ;-) But, thanks to my own large Schindler Trading investment, I'm making a modest living and enjoying it. Yes, Schindler Trading charges a 2% management fee and a 20% of new profits performance fee and there is a $20k minimum investment. Aaron Schindler Schindler Trading P.S. Let me apologize in advance about possibly not being able to post to this thread for the next several days. I will be traveling.
What I like about Schindler is that the guy keeps plugging away even when he has really bad months. That tells me he believes in his system and that over time, he believes the profits will be there. I would expect that he will continue to improve as he is clearly a survivor in this business.
Interesting comment Aaron...about the decent returns not neccessarily driving AUM growth. I am just a nat trading mainly equities right now...but i would like to eventually start a fund...but i think that when you are just on the cusp of critical size with a fund it can actually be quite a tuff choice to make. I know a few that have gone the fund route just to establish a track record...only to find they are succeeding in the dark so to speak. FWIW i think that relative performance (you can generate +ve returns when other funds...not just the indecies don't) and mainly...consistancy are really the key to drving AUM growth. A friend that started a tiny hedge fund has the same problem with AUM growth. Plus since it is extremely expensive to start a fund on your own (in Canada anyways) they started up under an umbrella firm. Ouch...splitting both the AUM Fee and the profit sharing equally with the 'feeder' firm...but the firm has yet to get them any real new money. So basically it is just the two partners capital Essentially paying the bloody firm to manage their own money by themselves....he is not super impressed so far. Some decent returns there Aaron...and yes as has been noted on this thread by yourself and others you have had some rough draw downs. Just curious...but have you heard any comments from sales side that the DD's have tapered investor interest a bit? Congrats though, man if everyone else on ET had a public trading record like you do....i'm sure most would have been very pleased to have your annualized gains instead. I know i have had some very tuff months myself...the volatility can get to you when you have to live on your profits Cheers