A very decent month for the Wizards: Only 6 negative returns with only one at less than -1%. The rest of the group posted positive results up to +3.22% for an average of 1.36% for the month of March. Only a handful of managers are in the red so far in 2013.

Please find the full results below [Read more →]

Unfortunately, this month’s (negative) results are overshadowed by the sad news of Liz Cheval’s recent passing.

Liz Cheval

A former turtle trader, she had a very successful trading career with an extraordinary performance track record.
While I did not know Liz Cheval personally, I had the chance to communicate with her via email and this was enough to witness her generous and friendly side, which has been underlined by many others.
She will surely be deeply missed.
My thoughts go out to Liz’s family.

Please find below the full report figures for the month of February: [Read more →]

Apologies for the later-than-usual timing of this report. A busy schedule with lot of traveling and other projects have forced me to delay this until now.

Here it is, and we can see that the Wizards are having a good start of the year with mostly positive performance. A nice change from 2012 – for now.

Note that I did a little bit of cleaning to the list, by removing John W. Henry. I replaced their entry with ISAM. Of several managers that have been kindly suggested as potential additions to this list, I picked what seems the most obvious choice. It seems quite fitting to have Larry Hite (and Stanley Fink) as part of the Trend Following Wizards.

Please see the full results below. [Read more →]

To avoid a negative 2012 year, it would have taken the trend following Wizards a “December home-run” (or rather – from the cricket equivalent – “hitting for six“; quite litteraly as six is amount of percentage points by which the virtual index is in the red).

Instead the performance for the last month of the year was only slightly positive and only a few funds are posting gains for 2012.

This confirms one and for all that, for trend following, 2012 was “not the greatest year” (an understatement for many). Both this report and the state of Trend Following posted negative results and one of the heavyweights in the industry that is John W Henry shut his fund in October. Note that I have left some numbers for JWH (as of the last reporting date) to include them in the end-of-year performance number. I’ll drop them for 2013, along with some potential update in that list (again).

Let 2013 be more successful!
Please see the full figures/results below:
[Read more →]

Mixed results for the penultimate month of the year with a slight bias to the downside (-0.61%). The index now stands at -6.64% YTD. It would take a very strong December to get the performance back in the black for 2012.

Note that I have not updated the list components, still showing JWH as N/A. Will probably tidy the list up (again) for the new year..

Full figures below…

[Read more →]

Most of you probably heard about John W. Henry exiting the CTA business by now (articles from wsj and futures mag). It was unlikely triggered by JWH October’s performance (the road to the demise has been quite longer than this: AUM had shrunk by 95% to $100M since 2006) but looking at the report for all other wizards, there sure was little reassurance there.

Rumours and noises about trend following being dead are even resurfacing, and this October report (although one anecdotal point in history) is no exception to this “trend” of negativity. It will be interesting to see if/when there is light at the end of the tunnel. But the walls have been painted bright red for October.

The full detailed results (excluding JWH) are below. They are all negative for the month with an average of -5.21% and nearly all of them in the same position year-to-date (average YTD: -6.07%). [Read more →]

Please find below the full details for the trend following wizards performance in September. Overall, a similar month to the previous one: on the negative side (a bit worse).
Most managers are in the red with an average return of -2.88%  -2.83%, taking the YTD figure back in the red too (-1.85%  -1.62%).

[Read more →]

Please find below the full details for the trend following wizards performance in August. Overall, a negative month with most in the red and an average return of -1.68%.

[Read more →]

Nice start to the second half of the year…
A left column full of black: a strong July for Trend Following Wizards who post a collective performance over 5% last month to get back in positive territory year-to-date.

See full results below:
[Read more →]