"time in the market" separates trading from investing. someone who day trades one day a week and makes 12% a year outperforms an investor who is always in the market who makes 12% a year by a long shot. this is why you "MUST".
I don’t follow - please elaborate. The OP subject is CTA performance. There are HF strategy CTA’s and there are macro CTA’s but the bottom line is the bottom line less fees as far as CTA performance is concerned.
take car racing for example ford has won many races but when you consider how many races entered vs how many races won, mosler automotive wins. cta performance as a whole does not reflect "time in the market" ------------ previous reply ------------ "time in the market" separates trading from investing. someone who day trades one day a week and makes 12% a year outperforms an investor who is always in the market who makes 12% a year by a long shot. this is why you "MUST".
Hedge Fund investors are sensitive about performance less fees and drawdowns. A CTA could have a macro strategy or a HF strategy or a RV strategy - and some ratio’d combination of system vs discretion disclosed. The OP posted about CTA performance so there is no need to differentiate between Trading and investing “time in the market” as that is covered in the Fund prospectus. But tell me if I’m in the weeds with this.
If a CTA holds leveraged positions overnight just some of the time, that could be more risky than an un leveraged stock portfolio that is always in the market. I dont know how many CTAs never hold positions overnight, ie daytrade only, but i would think they are the minority.
let's then say a cta that holds for a few days vs a cta that holds for a few months. the cta that holds for a few days with the same return is better than the one who holds for months producing the same return.
no your good - the op did ignore all sorts of pertinent information other than raw returns so actually i am the one in the weeds cause i was thinking too much as usual. better to dumb this thread down than to confuse with any logical thought. my bad.
the short answer is the space is too crowded. when the turtles made money, the market had so much dumb money in it, these guys made a killing with the simplest methods. now everybody has a computer, millions crunching numbers back and forth, any tradable patterns have all be discovered and traded to death. the turtle soup method killed the turtles, then someone else killed the soup guys.. and so on. this zero sum game is not worth playing no more.
Could it simply be, the Larger the CTA, the Lower the Returns? If I ran a 5 million dollar CTA, I would have the best record in the industry. If I ran a 400 Million CTA, My returns would be a hell of a lot less.
There's actually facts to back up your thesis. The $1-$10M and the $10-$100M AUM hedge funds have actually been doing well since the 2007/8 Crash. But the top 20 funds are crap. They're top heavy and stale.