The Managed Futures Moment

Author

The Idea Farm
July 07, 2024

Together With

“The nature of compound interest is it behaves like a snowball of sticky snow.. The trick is to have a very long hill.”

— Warren Buffett

Research

While the number of quoted US companies has declined by over 50% from a 1996 peak, private markets account for over 50% of US sales, private sector employment and GDP. This paper explains how natural language processing (NLP) can be used to analyze private market information and leverage that data to forecast public market fundamentals.

Kathryn Kaminski walks through the history of publicly traded managed futures funds to date, the important characteristics to think about when allocating to the space, and the recent growth of publicly available products via ETFs.

Bonus Content

Jason Zweig covers about hot funds and the curse of ‘self-inflated returns.’ Link

Brad Setser wrote a data-driven piece about the dangerous myth of deglobalization. Link

The ‘Buyback Barometer’ analyzes U.S. share repurchases and which companies have done well (or not) buying back stock. Link

Michael Kao wrote about true alpha, which “looks tantalizingly real from a distance, but as you get closer, it often vanishes, leaving you with nothing but sand—Beta in disguise.” Link

Roger Federer’s recent commencement speech at Dartmouth is worth the 25 minutes. Watch or Read

In tennis, perfection is impossible... In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches... Now, I have a question for all of you... what percentage of the POINTS do you think I won in those matches?

Only 54%.

In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play.

Discover why diversifying your investment portfolio is more crucial than ever with insights from Meb and AlphaSense's Director of Research, Nick Mazing.

The discussion, moderated by Jamie Catherwood, will focus on why flexibility and openness to global opportunities are more important than ever in successful investing. Additionally, you'll gain first-hand knowledge of how AI is reshaping market efficiency and investment strategies, drawing parallels with the polarizing impact of social media.

Podcasts

6/20/24 - 90 minutes

Veteran VC Fabrice Grinda talks about how he incorporates the macro landscape into his investment process and his view of the state of VC and startups today, specifically defense and crypto.

6/22/24 - 122 minutes

Bob Robotti shares lessons from his 40-year career and why he expects a resurgence of active value investing and old economy businesses.

6/16/24 - 105 minutes

Music industry executive Julie Greenwald has worked with artists like Coldplay, Cardi B, Lizzo, Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran & Jack Harlow. This is a masterclass on finding and developing talent based on her 30-year career.

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