Active Beta? What’s that? It is our term for a systematic and relatively passive way to enhance returns by capturing risk premia but at the same time manage risk and provide a real long term edge over standard buy and hold.

Having read countless books and papers preaching the long term upward drift in stock and bond prices we realize that risk premia is a good thing. Of course after having come through the 2000-2003 bear market we also know that if risk premia is good then risk management is even better. After reading Jim Leitners’ interview in the book Inside the House of Money we started to look at different ways we could gain more exposure and safely earn risk premia by using systematic strategies that have us involved in different asset classes.

Currently we have models built to capture risk premia in equities and fixed income. We are still working on ways to capture it in currencies and precious metals/commodities. We have built, bought, and researched several timing models over the years that are based off of technicals, valuations, sentiment, monetary inputs, and any mix of the above. Over time several of these timing models have proven to have a substantial edge over buy and hold especially when it comes to risk control. We have experimented with several different ways to use these models but so far have found that simpler is better and for each bullish model we enter X%. Currently for both fixed income and equities we enter 10% of our position for each model that is bullish using up to 50% of the model portfolio.

Right now we are working on a currency model that takes advantage of the carry trade, but with a risk management filter. We had been struggling to do it in a systematic risk controlled manner but thanks to a post by Macro Man we may have found a solution. If the testing works out we will post an update. As for the Precious Metals/Commodities model portfolio we are working on a CTA technical trend following model. We questioned calling this an Active Beta strategy but after re-reading some research by Bridgewater we decided that with the relative ease (No, it’s not actually easy. But once you have it up and running you shouldn’t have to tweak it much to keep it running.) to maintain it we would include it as Active Beta. Expect more posts on these models in the future as we get further in our research.

Happy Trading,

The Macro Trader

P.S. If you liked this post please add us to your RSS reader. if you have any questions, comments, praises, or criticisms feel free to e-mail us at Editor@TheMacroTrader.com

For further reading on Active Beta and systematic capturing of risk premia, here are some links to go to.
Inside the House of Money Excellent book filled with interviews with leading Global Macro Traders.
Pioneering Portfolio Management Must read book by David Swensen, portfolio manager of the Yale Endowment Fund.
Formula Research Nelson Freeburg builds some of the best systems out there.
World Beta blog Mebane Faber has done a lot of work on systematic methods of reducing risk.
Macro Man blog Macro Man has lots of witty takes on the markets and does quite a bit of solid research.

We received a few e-mails in regards to our last post where we discussed our performance. One of the things that was brought up a few times was why we have self-admittedly taken on too little risk. The simple answer is that we don’t like to lose money. Drawdowns are not something that we enjoy that much.

For a better explanation, let us first explain how we trade. Our basic method of scaling risk is described in the Stanley Druckenmiller interview in The New Market Wizards by Jack Schwager and is further explained in the interview with Christian Siva-Jothy in the book Inside The House Of Money by Steven Drobny. You start out by generating positive returns, and once you are up enough for the year, you can start taking on more risk. For example, if we are up 20%, we don’t mind taking on a risk that could potentially take us down 5%. We’d still be up 15% for the year. On the other hand, if we are only at 0% for the year a -5% hit would be really bad. So basically we trade away with strict loss limits until we are up enough to start raising our risk limits.

We strive to deliver good trading ideas on an absolute and on a risk-adjusted basis. A 50% gain is great, but if you had to risk 100% to get there, then it doesn’t look too good anymore. In that case, being wrong once blows up your account.

You can find more of the same in several other newsletters. For instance, if you pick up a copy of the Hulbert Financial Digest, you can find scores of newsletters that manage to have one 100%+ year and then proceed to lose -87% the next year, -37% the year after that, and so on. Trade like that and you’ll be lucky to have a whopping $10 bucks left in your account.

Happy Trading,

The Macro Trader

Here at The Macro Trader we run five different model portfolios: US equities, fixed income, precious metals, foreign equities, and currencies. We use ETF’s and the occasional Closed End Fund as our trading vehicles.

The starting value of each portfolio was $100,000.00. We typically risk from .5% to 2% (usually 1%) on each position, with each position taking up no more than 25% of the model portfolio’s equity. So for example, with a $100,000.00 portfolio, we would risk no more than $1000.00 from entry to stop on one position, and that one position initially could not take up more than $25,000.00 in equity.

We track each model portfolio against two different benchmarks: The 0-line and the standard benchmarks in their asset class. We use two benchmarks for two reasons: First we believe in absolute returns. Our newsletter is patterned after a Global Macro Hedge Fund, so we pay strict heed to risk controls and positive returns. Who cares if you beat the SP500 because it lost 25% that year, and you “only” lost 20%? Sure, you may have won in Morningstar’s eyes, but you and your investors lost real money. In addition as long as you have positive returns, you could potentially lever up your portfolio to juice up your returns if your trading is sufficiently risk-adverse.

That said, we also track our relative benchmarks because people are used to them and doing so helps us gauge the effectiveness of some of our risk-taking. For instance, if we are taking on a lot of risk and are lagging our relative benchmark, then we need to scale back. If on the other hand we are beating the benchmark while taking far less risk, it may be appropriate to take on a bit more risk. As we will discuss later in this post, the latter situation has been our problem as of late.

US Equities

When we started the letter we had been bearish on US equities for some time. That said, we remained in cash until our 2/1/08 issue when we went short the XLF-Financials ETF. So far we have had three closed out trades. Of the three trades, two were profitable and one was closed at a loss. Our return has thus far been 1.57%. In the same time the SP500 has returned -3.28%. So on an absolute basis we are positive with a 1.57% return and on a relative basis we are beating the SP500 by 4.85%.

Fixed Income

In fixed income our first trade came in the 12/28/07 issue and was a buy of the TIP-TIP’s ETF. Since then we have had six closed out trades and currently have one open position. Of the seven trades all but one has been profitable. Our total return has been 1.9%. In the same time our primary benchmark the TLT-20 Year Treasuries has returned -4.1%. So on an absolute basis we are positive with a 1.9% return, and we are beating our benchmark by 6%. (By the way, as the universe of fixed income ETF’s expands we may change our benchmark to the Lehman Aggregate Index AGG-ETF)

Precious Metals

The first trade we had in precious metals came in the 12/7/07 issue. We went long GLD-Gold ETF. Since that time we have had three total trades in the metals portfolio and all of them have been profitable. Our performance has been good with a 5.23% return which beats the XAU Philly Gold/Silver index by 5.24% and the price of gold by .89%. We were able to achieve this while never being more than 54% invested.

Global Equities

Our first trade was a short in the EWW-Mexico ETF in the 12/1/07 issue. Since then we have had a total of six positions. Four of them have been closed out, and we currently have two open positions. Of our closed trades, three were losses and one was profitable. Currently our two open positions are profitable. Our P/L for this portfolio is -1.33%. That of course comes out to a -$1,326.48 loss. On an absolute basis we are obviously down. Depending on the benchmark used, we are either a bit ahead of a bit behind. Using the EFA-ETF which returned -6.64% we are ahead by 5.31%. Using the EEM-ETF which returned -.09% we are behind by 1.24%.

Currencies

We didn’t have our first currency trade until the 2/22/08 issue. Since then we have had four trades: Three winners and one loser. We are up 3.12%. As of now we are using the DBV-Currency Harvest ETF as our benchmark. Since there is no real benchmark for currencies, we decided to use the carry trading DBV-ETF as a benchmark. The DBV is down -3.71%, so we have beat our benchmark by 6.83%.

Overall the model portfolios are up 2.1% as of today’s close (5/7/08). Of our 20 closed out trades 14 have been winners and six have been losers. Our winners have made $13,894.01 and our losers have lost $3,675.88 for a total gain of $10,218.13. We currently have three open positions, all three are profitable, adding an additional $278.70.

While evaluating our performance, we have realized that we need to take on more risk. With a 70% accuracy rate and a 3.78 profit factor we should probably either be bigger in our positions, have more open positions, or a combination of both. Going forward this will definitely be an area that we will be working on.

Happy Trading,

The Macro Trader

In our December 7^th, 2007 issue we went bullish gold. By way of the ETF GLD we got in at $79.60. Currently it is right around $87. So to help our subscribers and potential subscribers understand our trade process we felt it would be helpful to walk you through this trade.

We look for potential trades fundamentally and trade them technically. As we have mentioned before technical analysis helps us define our risk vs. reward and makes our trading more objective. We like to think we get the best of both worlds.

Fundamentally there are several things that are bullish for gold and precious metals in general.

-Negative real rates. When inflation adjusted rates are negative you want your money in real assets.

-Falling US Dollar. If the US Dollar is declining in value relative to almost anything you want your money in other currencies. While we don’t necessarily think we need to be back on the gold standard, we do see gold as an alternative currency.

-Rising Swiss Franc. Historically when the Swiss Franc is rising it means that investors are putting their money in a safe haven currency. The correlations between gold and the Swiss Franc have held over the long term due to many of the same reasons.

-Rising Inflation. Again if your money is devaluing you want to put it somewhere else.

These are but a few of the reasons that we have been bullish gold. After we have a fundamental reason to go long or go short as the case may be we then look for a catalyst. That catalyst can come in many ways. Sometimes it is an actual economic number, a chart pattern, or any number of things. In this case it was a textbook example of a triangle consolidation.

As we have posted before we are huge proponents of risk management. We have found that for us technical analysis is one of the big pieces of the puzzle. Using charts we are able to define entry and exit points in an objective way. Some may disagree with us but we have found charts to be invaluable. In the case of gold we had wanted to get long for a while but it was overextended. Well patience paid off because it pulled back and consolidated and formed a strong triangle. We placed it in our newsletter and that same week we got in at $79.60. As of tonights close it is at $86.50 and our current stop is at $84.38

Happy Trading,

The Macro Trader

P.S. If you have any questions regarding our newsletter or anything else feel free to e-mail us at Editor@TheMacroTrader.com

As you probably know Macro-Traders typically take a top-down approach when looking for potential investment ideas. Specifically we look for the best risk to reward opportunities we can across all asset classes, countries, and trading strategies. So we basically trade anything anywhere that we can find an edge.

Our investment approach takes a multi-step process to generate investments for our portfolios.

This is a flowchart showing our basic process.

 

What follows is an explanation of each step.

 

We have two ways to come up with investment ideas. We have our quantitative methods and our traditional research. Our quantitative methods vary from all out trading models that give actual buy and sell signals to scanners that look for favorable conditions in different asset classes, to a few tools we have that just look for unusual activity. One of the best things about using quantitative tools is that we miss fewer opportunities due to a computer being able to scan more asset classes in more markets than we could ever do.

As much as technology helps us to catch things we wouldn’t otherwise find. We also rely heavily on traditional research. We are always reading magazines, newspapers, books, trade publications, research reports, etc. We read anything that might help us find new investment opportunities or more information for our current positions and themes. We also try to listen to smart people and watch news and other television that might help us find anything helpful. Basically we are information junkies.

Our next step after getting some investment ideas is to research them further to validate them. Most of the time we hit dead ends, but occasionally we come across something good. If we decide that it makes sense we start looking to see if there is a past model that goes with it. For instance as of this writing we are bullish emerging market telecom and have been for some time. When we first came across this theme we liked the idea because it was logical. So looking for a model we found VIP and MBT both Russian telecoms. They both had outstanding growth rates and the stocks were definitely outperforming the market. Well since then we have traded them and have found several other good telecoms riding that theme like TKC, TMX, TEF, and ETF.

After deciding that what we have found is a solid theme that works out fundamentally, we look at the risks and rewards. Risk management is the most important part of what we do. We look at risk on several levels. At the individual security level we look to see what the best instrument to trade is. For instance if we are bullish on a country do we play it using equities, debt, or currency? We then look to see if we can cut off risk by using options. We like options for their flexibility. Many times we will find an idea that we like but due to the risk profile we can’t get in using the typical security, but we are able to manage the risk by using options. Another risk we really look at is portfolio risk. How does it correlate to our other positions, how does it correlate to the overall portfolio, are we actually just playing another version of a theme we already have on? We look at geographic, political, and any other type of risk we can. The final thing we look at is at what point do we admit that we are wrong? Or in other words where do we place our stop. Our stops are based off of the chart, volatility, potential reward, and size of our position. With risk there are not too many absolute rules. But one that we do always abide by is to never risk more than 2% of the portfolio on any position. Many times we will risk less but we will never risk more. So we size our positions accordingly.

Once all of this has been done we can finally add it to our portfolio. In future posts we will go into more depth on each part of this process. But this should give you an idea as to what we do and how we go about doing it.

Happy Trading,
The Macro Trader

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