If a trend-following system is too slow, you risk a Type II error by missing a turning point.If a trend-following system is too fast, you risk a Type I error by reacting to noise.
"Disciplined Systematic Global Macro Views" focuses on current economic and finance issues, changes in market structure and the hedge fund industry as well as how to be a better decision-maker in the global macro investment space.
There has been extensive work on currency factors such as carry, value, momentum, and volatility, yet currencies may be unique from equities. The movement of returns in currency may be based on factors that are based on how they may cluster. In "Currency Factors", the authors focus on clustering of currencies into baskets and not traditional factors. They find that G10 currency co-movements can be explained by a limited number of clusters, a dollar currency and a European currency cluster. These clusters can be further extended to a commodity factor cluster and a world factor cluster based on trading volume. This suggests that a mental model of viewing currencies within their cluster and then within traditional factors may be a method to form quick judgments on the co-movement across currencies.
Is there a wisdom of crowds effect for macro forecasts? The answer is yes, per the new paper "On the wisdom of crowds (of economists)", but the impact of looking at more economists diminishes quickly. Whether the MSE, the change in the MSE from adding another economist, or looking at the relative improvement, the answer is all the same. Check or average a few economists but the marginal impact of looking at a large group is minimal. Most economists seem to come up with similar forecasts which is not surprising. No economist wants to be an outlier relative to their peers, and most economists use the same models or frameworks which means they are likely to derive the same result. There is no value from looking at a big crowd of economists on the big macro questions.
More investors are using robo-advisors to get investment advice. Relative to doing it yourself, the robo-advisor may be an improvement. Is this better than a financial advisor is a different question and remains to be answered. We know that the robo-advisor is cheaper, so the investor is receiving net savings versus the standard fees that are usually charged.
Do you get more sophisticated advice? A recent study shows that the advice given is rather simple and focuses on only a few factors - what is your horizon, goal, and loss reaction are the top three. These simple rules are driven a lot of client money and will tie the movement of savings to a limited set of variables. See "What drives robo-advice?"
“Simple models and a lot of data trump more elaborate models based on less data....
We don't have better algorithms; we just have more data.” Peter Norvig.
There are various types of edges that will generate extra return. One of the most important in the gathering and using of information that others don't have or do not use efficiently. Of course, there is public information that many investors have, but there is value-added through: 1. transforming the data, 2. mixing the data with other data. 3. getting the data and processing faster. Data can be delivered systematically which requires the systematic processing of the data. There is a desire for using more sophisticate techniques with analyzing data yet keeping it simple may be preferred. It is easier to tell the narrative, and it is easy to see where something may be going wrong.
Mr. Gilder noted, “The scarcest resource is time, which always becomes scarce as other things become abundant. It is human genius that transcends the scarcity of time.” That’s economic productivity in a nutshell. - Andy Kessler WSJ 3/31/25
A variation on the time value of money, but we have to value time, and it becomes more valuable when there are more conflicts or things trying to grab our attention and time. Depending on the activity, we want time to speed up or slowdown, but unfortunately, we do not often do a good job of putting a price on time.
The folks at Quantica Capital have generated a provocative study called, "When trend-following hits capacity: A case study on commodities, exploring the hidden opportunities of limited investment universe diversification". Given the growth in trend-following programs, it is important to think about the issue of capacity. This is once again the age-old question of how many markets should you trade and what is the value of trading more markets.
Quantica finds that the top ten markets in liquidity represent about 70% of the total available commodity futures liquidity. It is not exactly clear how liquidity is measured but the intuition makes sense. Energy futures dominate commodity futures liquidity along with gold, silver, and soybeans. All the other markets will be harder to trade. This is important because many of the futures that are not in the top ten provide significant diversification. We can measure the value of diversification through a simple measure of the Sharpe ratio is sum of individual Sharpe ratios for each market times the diversification multiplier that is related to the average correlation across markets and the number of markets in the portfolio. There is significant value with moving beyond the top ten markets even though you may not have better trend characteristics and there is less liquidity. Diversification is a benefit unto itself. You pay with lower liquidity, but you get the strongest diversification benefits from commodities. There is no guarantee of higher returns from holding more markets, but you get a strong tailwind from diversification.
An old paper that I forgot about but still relevant today is "Will the Economic Recovery Die of Old Age?". Recoveries can get long in the tooth, but most recessions are man-made. The cause a recession can be Minsky speculative excess, poor policies, or just old age. They are created from bad policy choices or the accumulation of excesses, yet like mortality tables there is a life span for any recovery. Of course, through good policies, the length can be extended. We can expect that current recoveries will have a longer life past on history, but the likelihood of failure will still go up as we age. We are better at getting policy right, but we are not perfect. The current recovery can still continue and the likelihood of a recession is still likely below double digits, but watch for signs.
"Nothing good happens below the 200-day moving average!" maybe attributed to Paul Tudor Jones, but often used.
The asymmetry of markets is strong, and markets will start act differently when prices fall below the long-term average. Is there a theoretical reason for this? No. It is a long-term technical and volatility starts to gain on the downside. This may not be a hard and fast rule, but you cannot go wrong with, at the minimum, using this as a basis for reassessment. There are other rules like the death cross of the 50-day moving average crossing the 200-day moving average. You may not get rich following rules of thumb but having points of reassessment is helpful. Disciplined watchpoints will reduce anxiety.
Perhaps it is not stupidity, but the connections between market indicators tell us something about a regime and we have a high degree of similarity across market indicators we are receiving a signal of a regime. The simplest regime is the business cycle or more specifically, a recession. A market downturn changes everything and is our key systematic risk which requires a risk premium. There has been significant work to refine different regimes based on volatility, policy choices, and market environment with different levels of success. What is found that whether asset class or factors, there different asset or risk factors will behave differently based on the regime. If an investor can predict correctly, the regime, he can rotate portfolio allocations and improve overall return.
A new paper has been added to the regime research, "Regimes". It uses a simple methodology for defining regimes and then trying to exploit the relationship. The authors look at a set of macro variables that have different correlation. They transform the data into z-scores and then use a distance function to form a similarity metric. This similarity measure can be used as the basis for making portfolio decisions. This works because the z-scores of the economic variables have a persistence. If we can find periods of similarity between current values and the past and then look at the returns associated with that period, we can then make a judgement on what may happen next period.
The interesting part of this work is that it is consistent with how investors think about the market. We look at events today and then search for similar event periods in the past and then extrapolate what may happen in the future. This is done on an ad hoc basis but using a similarity score it can be quantified.
Financial shocks are asymmetric, that is, the impact of a downward financial shock is significantly greater than a positive shock. The asymmetry is not with the size of the shock but the sign of the shock. A negative shock creates a stronger reaction than a positive shock. The size shows a symmetry. See the paper "Machine learning the macroeconomic effects of financial shocks". Using Bayesian Neural networks (BNN) based on excess bond premium for inflation, industrial production, and employment. This is a simple straightforward approach for a machine learning model. Perhaps many think that the result is obvious, but it reinforces protecting the downside and preparing for bad news. You will not get this result from a simple regression model, so it is important to see how non-linear thinking can be incorporated in trading.
"The Committee will slow the pace of decline of its securities holdings by reducing the monthly redemption cap on Treasury securities from $25 billion to $5 billion." Fed Chairman Powell
The Fed is over their pre-pandemic balance sheet by trillions of dollars, and it now want to cut the redemption cap by 80% to $5 billion a month or $60 billion a year. Why pretend that you are making any effort to adjust your balance sheet.
We don't want to go into all of the balance sheet dynamics. The Fed is still holding a large MBS portfolio that will not run-off because prepayments have slowed. The still pays balances on reserves, so it has a negative carry portfolio. The slowing of QT helps the Treasury and reduces pressure on interest rates. The overall effect allows more "money" in the baking system which will make it that much harder to get down to the magic 2% target. There may be pressure to not lower rates, but the QT at $25 billion will show resolve without strong market impact. Cutting to $5 billion shows no resolve and generates a signal that the Fed is not ready to get back to normal.
We are in an equity market correction with a decline of 10% from the high. There has been a widening of spreads in credit markets, yet the overall signaling in credit still suggests a stable market. One, credit spreads are off their lows but still below the disruptive period of September 2024 when the Fed believed there was a need to cut rates 50 bps. Two, credit spreads are much lower than the bank crisis period of February 2023 and the period of equity market correction in 2022. Three, spreads are lower than the period of higher inflation post-pandemic.
This may be the beginning of a larger correction which means that investor still have the opportunity to reduce their credit risk. Credit adjustments, short of a crisis, are slow-moving, so there is the threat of being early with portfolio rebalancing, yet given the low level of spreads, pulling duration is an easy way of offering portfolio protection.
Dan Gardner wrote a devastating book on the quality of forecasts, Future Babble: Why expert predictions are next to worthless, and you can do better. Can we make good predictions on the future? Gardner pours on the evidence that the answer is no, not in the least.
Karl Popper states, "The course of human history is strongly influenced by the growth of human knowledge, but it is impossible to predict, by rational or scientific methods, the future growth of scientific knowledge." Our global and economic changes are based on changes in knowledge. Predictions about shortages are often wrong because experts do not account for technical changes. They underestimate the impact of knowledge.
It is an unpredictable world and that is especially for the experts. Experts may be good at describing the past and the present, but they do not have any edge on judging the future. At best, experts will say that we can expect more of the same. They are hard pressed to answer questions about change.
Gardner described the difference between two forms of experts: the foxes and hedgehogs. Hedgehogs know one thing very well while the foxes are generalists. The generalists will often beat the specialists, so look to generalist thinking for predictions.
While the author may leave the ready with a sense of hopelessness, we can control uncertainty through relying on diversification and planning for change. While we cannot make good predictions, we can always assume that the world will change.
The new paper "Trend and Reversion in Financial Markets on Time Scales from Minutes to Decades" does an exhaustive analysis of trend behavior from the shortest time possible to long time periods and find good evidence of trend and reversion based on the strength of the trend. Weak trends persist and strong trends are likely to reverse. Reversal coefficients are relatively stable while trends show the strongest pattern in the 3-6 month period which is consistent with most trend-following managers. There is a lot going on with this paper given the large number of markets and time horizons tested and the number of transformations used to tease-out the results.