Winning with managed futures
Subtitle: how to select a top performing commodity trading advisor
By: Thomas A. McCafferty.
Publisher: Probus
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
Subjects: Commodity futures.
Description: In the fast-paced and volatile futures and options markets, the law of economic Darwinism prevails: only the fittest traders survive. To succeed, you have to be either a superb trader or have the ability to select a superb trader with whom to invest your money. Anything less is simply too risky. More and more investors - from sophisticated pension funds to everyday investors looking for superior returns - are investing with commodity trading advisors. The reason is clear: top traders regularly earn high double-digit returns and, in isolated cases, triple-digit returns. In Winning with Managed Futures, Tom McCafferty demystifies the trader selection process by outlining cutting edge quantitative and subjective methods that can be used by any investor to evaluate a trader's skill and mental profile. No single statistical method tells the complete story about a trader. Rate of return, for example, tells an investor nothing about a trader's volatility. Likewise, data on a trader's worst drawdown says nothing about the trader's potential upside performance. Only by combining a variety of measures can an investor paint a composite sketch of a trader and visualize his or her potential for future success. McCafferty skillfully breaks down the selection process into component parts. He begins by reviewing the winning characteristics of top traders and highlighting natural disqualifiers that should eliminate weaker traders from an investor's short-list. He then explains how to apply a number of easy-to-use performance benchmarks and ratios in order to dissect a trader's performance volatility, ability to recover from account drawdowns and ability to outperform trading peers over different investment time horizons. An investor should use these methods, McCafferty emphasizes, in order to find a trader who matches his or her risk/reward profile. In so doing, an investor is less likely to encounter unpleasant surprises and more likely to select a trader who will enhance the overall performance of his or her investment portfolio. For investors looking for superior returns, Winning with Managed Futures provides a road map to success.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-197) and index.