Commodity Trading Advisors

Commodity Trading Advisors PDF

Author: Greg N. Gregoriou

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-09-02

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 1118160959

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Authoritative, up-to-date research and analysis that provides a dramatic new understanding of the rewards-and risks-of investing in CTAs Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs) are an increasingly popular and potentially profitable investment alternative for institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals. Commodity Trading Advisors is one of the first books to study their performance in detail and analyze the "survivorship bias" present in CTA performance data. This book investigates the many benefits and risks associated with CTAs, examining the risk/return characteristics of a number of different strategies deployed by CTAs from a sophisticated investor's perspective. A contributed work, its editors and contributing authors are among today's leading voices on the topic of commodity trading advisors and a veritable "Who's Who" in hedge fund and CTA research. Greg N. Gregoriou (Plattsburgh, NY) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Finance and Research Coordinator in the School of Business and Economics at the State University of New York. Vassilios N. Karavas (Amherst, MA) is Director of Research at Schneeweis Partners. Francois-Serge Lhabitant (Coppet, Switzerland) is a FAME Research Fellow, and a Professor of Finance at EDHEC (France) and at HEC University of Lausanne (Switzerland). Fabrice Rouah (Montreal, Quebec) is Institut de Finance Mathématique de Montréal Scholar in the finance program at McGill University.

Performance, Managerial Skill, and Factor Exposures in Commodity Trading Advisors and Managed Futures Funds

Performance, Managerial Skill, and Factor Exposures in Commodity Trading Advisors and Managed Futures Funds PDF

Author: S. Burcu Avci

Publisher: Dissertation.com

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 1612334733

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Understanding risk is important. Prior to 2008, as the yields on safe assets hit rock bottom, investors began to focus on an alphabet soup of more complex instruments. These complex securities were rated AAA and appeared as safe as U.S. Treasuries, but with much higher yields. The 2008 financial crisis revealed, however, that higher yields on these instruments came with higher risk, albeit too late for these investors. This study seeks to understand the risk–return tradeoff, managerial skill, and factor exposures on the risk-return tradeoff in two financial instruments that have been limitedly investigated: commodity trading advisors (CTAs) and managed futures funds (MFFs). This study begins by documenting the differences between CTAs/MFFs and hedge funds and mutual funds, starting with the legal and operational differences. Next, it conducts a performance analysis, which indicates that CTAs and MFFs, as standalone investment vehicles, provide returns that are higher than the average market returns in bear markets, while carrying lower risk. The strong standing of CTAs and MFFs in bear markets earn them their reputation as “downside risk protectors.” CTAs and MFFs are profitable individual assets but adding these funds to classical asset portfolios enhances portfolio performance significantly. This feature makes them strong hedging assets. As expected, their performance is below that of standard assets in up markets. Chapter 4 finds that the superior performance of CTAs and MFFs can be explained by managerial skill. Positive and significant Jensen alphas are evidence of good performance; moreover, the persistence of the Jensen alphas is supported by both parametric and non-parametric tests. Incentive fees and fund age are found to be positively related to managerial skill, while (somewhat surprisingly) management fees are found to be negatively related to it. Chapter 5 finds that many financial and macroeconomic factors are statistically unrelated to CTA and MFF performance. However, the value premium (HML) factor and industrial production growth (IPG) are correlated with their performance. HML has a relation effect on one-month-ahead fund returns, whereas IPG has a negative association with them. Nonparametric tests support these results marginally. Overall, these findings suggest that both CTAs and MFFs use well-known and well-established predictors of expected returns to generate their alphas.

Commodity Trading Advisors, (CTA), as a Mean of Diversification in a Hedge Fund Portfolio

Commodity Trading Advisors, (CTA), as a Mean of Diversification in a Hedge Fund Portfolio PDF

Author: Michel Guirguis

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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Commodity trading advisers, (CTA), or managed futures managers' trade in the commodity market. The hedge funds invest in commodity futures, currencies, bonds and shares. Hedge funds use managed futures in terms of indices, treasuries, fixed-income securities and commodities such as gold, silver, oil, corn, cocoa, sugar etc. Combining managed futures with shares and bonds provide better returns with lower risk or mean variance optimal solution. The optimization is due to the negative or low correlation and better diversification between managed futures and traditional investments such as bonds and shares. Our results suggest that the efficient frontier is achieved by adding managed futures. In other words, we get highest return with low risk. The standard deviation as a measure of risk is reduced and the Sortino ratio, which measures the downside risk, is increased by over 50%. The downside volatility of a mixed portfolio of managed futures, bonds and shares is better represented by the Sortino ratio. The sample is provided from Data Feeder data set. It is very comprehensive and includes managed futures hedge funds for the period 1998 to 2003. The database includes defunct funds and funds that ceased to operate and, therefore, is free from survivorship bias.

Performance, Managerial Skill, and Factor Exposures in Commodity Trading Advisors and Managed Futures Funds

Performance, Managerial Skill, and Factor Exposures in Commodity Trading Advisors and Managed Futures Funds PDF

Author: Sureyya Burcu Avci

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781612334745

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"Understanding risk is important. Prior to 2008, as the yields on safe assets hit rock bottom, investors began to focus on an alphabet soup of more complex instruments. These complex securities were rated AAA and appeared as safe as U.S. Treasuries, but with much higher yields. The 2008 financial crisis revealed, however, that higher yields on these instruments came with higher risk, albeit too late for these investors. This study seeks to understand the risk-return tradeoff, managerial skill, and factor exposures on the risk-return tradeoff in two financial instruments that have been limitedly investigated: commodity trading advisors (CTAs) and managed futures funds (MFFs). This study begins by documenting the differences between CTAs/MFFs and hedge funds and mutual funds, starting with the legal and operational differences. Next, it conducts a performance analysis, which indicates that CTAs and MFFs, as standalone investment vehicles, provide returns that are higher than the average market returns in bear markets, while carrying lower risk. The strong standing of CTAs and MFFs in bear markets earn them their reputation as "downside risk protectors." CTAs and MFFs are profitable individual assets but adding these funds to classical asset portfolios enhances portfolio performance significantly. This feature makes them strong hedging assets. As expected, their performance is below that of standard assets in up markets. Chapter 4 finds that the superior performance of CTAs and MFFs can be explained by managerial skill. Positive and significant Jensen alphas are evidence of good performance; moreover, the persistence of the Jensen alphas is supported by both parametric and non-parametric tests. Incentive fees and fund age are found to be positively related to managerial skill, while (somewhat surprisingly) management fees are found to be negatively related to it. Chapter 5 finds that many financial and macroeconomic factors are statistically unrelated to CTA and MFF performance. However, the value premium (HML) factor and industrial production growth (IPG) are correlated with their performance. HML has a relation effect on one-month-ahead fund returns, whereas IPG has a negative association with them. Nonparametric tests support these results marginally. Overall, these findings suggest that both CTAs and MFFs use well-known and well-established predictors of expected returns to generate their alphas"--

Fooling Some of the People All of the Time, A Long Short (and Now Complete) Story, Updated with New Epilogue

Fooling Some of the People All of the Time, A Long Short (and Now Complete) Story, Updated with New Epilogue PDF

Author: David Einhorn

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2010-12-07

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 0470481544

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A revealing look at Wall Street, the financial media, and financial regulators by David Einhorn, the President of Greenlight Capital Could 2008's credit crisis have been minimized or even avoided? In 2002, David Einhorn-one of the country's top investors-was asked at a charity investment conference to share his best investment advice. Short sell Allied Capital. At the time, Allied was a leader in the private financing industry. Einhorn claimed Allied was using questionable accounting practices to prop itself up. Sound familiar? At the time of the original version of Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story the outcome of his advice was unknown. Now, the story is complete and we know Einhorn was right. In 2008, Einhorn advised the same conference to short sell Lehman Brothers. And had the market been more open to his warnings, yes, the market meltdown might have been avoided, or at least minimized. Details the gripping battle between Allied Capital and Einhorn's Greenlight Capital Illuminates how questionable company practices are maintained and, at times, even protected by Wall Street Describes the failings of investment banks, analysts, journalists, and government regulators Describes how many parts of the Allied Capital story were replayed in the debate over Lehman Brothers Fooling Some of the People All of the Time is an important call for effective government regulation, free speech, and fair play.

Commodity Trading Advisors

Commodity Trading Advisors PDF

Author: Tony Guida

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13:

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Nowadays commodity investing is facing a tremendous interest from all kinds of investors, the surging amount invested in commodity related indices being one of the manifestations of this phenomenon. Due to their historical de-correlation with conventional securities and their hedging properties against inflation, commodity investment is being perceived as a true asset class. Therefore, the question of commodity investment is of interest for investors but also for academics. As a consequence, there had been a common statement that the commodity price rally of the last 10 years is largely due to new operators in the futures markets. The economist point of view on that issue was to question if the quot;speculatorsquot; side had affected those markets. As a matter of fact alternative investment, encompassing CTAs CPOs and Hedge Funds, had been criticized for their presumed bad impact on the commodity futures prices. This paper will not seek to find a clear-cut answer to the ancestral economic question of the financial operators increasing the risks in futures markets. The aim of this paper is to demystify one the historical actor of the futures markets whom are often misunderstood by non-financial actors. Using quantitative methods (multifactor models and rolling style analysis windows) we find that CTAs seem to have a relatively low exposure to commodities futures. We also try to define the causality relation between those whom are liquidity provider and liquidity user using the CFTC data on open interest from major futures contracts. Using Variance Decomposition and Granger causality test, on a sample of the major contracts, we find that non commercial investors seemed to enter the future market after a change in commodity prices not the other way around, playing therefore the role of liquidity provider for most of the commodity analysed in this study.