Following the Trend

ANDREAS F. CLENOW is a Swedish Swiss author, financier, and entrepreneur based in Zurich, where he is the Chief Investment Officer of a family office. He has been a tech entrepreneur, a financial consultant, hedge fund manager, financial engineer, quantitative trader, financial advisor, board member, and a middle management corporate bureaucrat during his illustrious career. He is the author of the global best sellers Following the Trend, Stocks on the Move, Trading Evolved and A Most Private Bank and he can be reached though his website, www.clenow.com

1.  Foreword by Jerry Parker 1

2. Forewords to the First Edition 2

3. Preface 4

1. Cross Asset Trend Following with Futures 1

Diversified Trend Following in a Nutshell 3

The Traditional Investment Approach 5

The Case for Diversified Managed Futures 9

Managed Futures as a Business 14

Differences between Running a Trading Business and Personal Trading 19

Marketability of Your Strategy 19

Volatility Profile 20

Subscriptions and Redemptions 22

Psychological Difference 23

2. Futures Data 25

Futures as an Asset Class 25

Futures Exchanges 25

Futures and Currency Exposure 25

Futures Data 28

Dealing with Limited Life Span 28

Term Structure 31

Basis Gaps 33

The Change in how Continuations are used 36

Futures Sectors 37

Agricultural Commodities 37

Non-Agricultural Commodities 40

Currencies 44

Equities 46

Rates 49

3. Constructing Diversified Futures Trading Strategies 53

They are all doing the Same Thing 54

Cracking Open the Magic Trend Following Black Box 58

Investment Universe 58

Position Sizing 61

Slippage and Commission 64

Strategy Personality 65

Anatomy of a Trend Following Strategy 66

4. Two Basic Trend Following Strategies 69

Strategy Performance 72

Correlations Between Strategies 80

Conclusions from the Basic Strategies 82

Combining the Strategies 83

Trend Filter 83

A Core Trend Following Strategy 85

Controlling the Risk Level 87

Cash Management and the Effect of Free Government Money 90

Loading Fees 96

5. In-Depth Analysis of Trend Following Performance 98

Strategy Behaviour 98

Strategy Long Term Performance 100

Crisis Alpha 103

Trading Direction 105

Sector Impact 108

Putting Leverage into Context 111

As a Complement to an Equity Portfolio 117

6. Year by Year Review 121

How to read this chapter 122

2002 123

2003 132

2004 139

2005 145

2006 151

2007 156

2008 162

2009 169

2010 174

2011 179

2012 185

2013 191

2014 195

2015 200

2016 205

2017 209

2018 215

2019 220

2020 226

2021 232

Year by Year Conclusions 239

7. Counter Trend Trading 244

Building a Counter Trend Model 245

Counter Trend Performance 249

8. Systematic Trading without Time-series 252

Tem Structure 253

Measuring Term Structure 255

Using Term Structure for Trading 258

Limitations of Term Structure Models 260

9. Tweaks and Improvements 262

Trading Synthetic Contracts 263

Correlation Matrices, Position Sizing and Risk 265

Optimisation and its Discontents 267

Style Diversification 269

Volatility Based Stop Loss 272

10. Practicalities of Futures Trading 275

Required Asset Base 275

Going Live 277

Execution 279

Cash Management 281

Higher Volatility in Drawdown Mode 284

Portfolio Monitoring 285

Strategy Follow-Up 285

11. Modelling Futures Strategies 287

Why you need to do your own research 288

A Word about Programming 289

Settling on a research environment 289

Python and Zipline 291

Sourcing your data 293

Data Storage 295

The Dangers of Backtesting 295

12. Does Trend Following work on Stocks? 297

Define Trend Following 297

What about ETFs? 300

13. Trading for a Living 302

How much does a good trader make? 302

Getting a Trading Job 305

Trading your own Money 308

Trading OPM 309

Reasons not to Trade OPM 311

14. Final Words of Caution 313

Diminishing Returns of Futures Funds 313

Setting the Initial Risk Level 314

Going Live 316

15. Bibliography 318

Author Website 318