Skewing Your Diversification is an internet talk show on alternative investments hosted by Mark Shore.
The show covers many topics of alternatives with a special focus on managed futures, hedge funds, commodities, currencies and futures. Stay tuned for more episodes and lots of great guests!
Sunday nights the show is live-streaming at 9pm ET on www.btfd.tv
To view past episodes, go to the Skewing Your Diversification page here.
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While industry veterans in the futures space understand the value of CTAs in a portfolio, hedge fund assets under management dwarf those AUM totals by over thirteen times. To explain it like one of my traders, “There is a multi-trillion-dollar industry pushing stocks no matter how they perform.” We do not have that luxury as investors come to us looking to steady their portfolio and ultimately hold us to a more demanding standard. After all, the marketing machine is owned by our competition. This puts the value of reaching potential prospects at a higher premium. Each conversation is one more that we can position to help someone now or down the road. So where does one look for these investors?...
For decades, investors frequently perceived a traditional portfolio allocation in the range of 60 percent equities and 40 percent bonds for proper diversification. Since 2000 investors, both large and small, have experienced several moments of negative returns to their portfolios. This experience has enlightened many investors to seek wider portfolio diversification in attempts to reduce their correlation risk, tail risk and negative volatility. As investors search for greater diversification, it begs the question, is there an added value to allocate some portion of a traditional portfolio to a volatility index, such as VSTOXX® Futures? Investors often view each component of their portfolio as a standalone investment. Ultimately asset allocation is about how each portfolio component compliments the entire portfolio. Asset...
Happy New Year everyone! With the holidays behind us, I thought this would be a good opportunity to look at new business opportunities for the upcoming year. I work almost exclusively in the managed futures space. In speaking with brokers, I have found that they tend to be segregated into those who work primarily in transactional business, retail brokerage and hedging, and those who focus on managed futures accounts. Many transactional brokers know that commodity trading advisors (CTA’s) are out there, but they don’t know how they can become involved in that side of the business. The first question one should ask is, “why should I get involved with managed futures?” The biggest objection I run into when talking with...
