Sharpe or Skew?

Managed Futures offers this promise- uncorrelated returns with the potential for crisis protection. How an allocator chooses to allocate to this asset class is important. Do they judge managers by best risk-adjusted performance? Or do they judge managers by how they improve the risk-adjusted performance of the total portfolio? Do they view the asset as an absolute return element, prioritizing Sharpe Ratio, or as a portfolio element prioritizing diversification? Assuming the latter, prioritizing the addition of positive skew is critical to crisis diversification, offsetting the historically negative skew of the equity market and creating a better total portfolio.

Typical Managed Futures managers employ a risk controlled approach called vol targeting (we have written previously on this topic here and here). In essence, vol targeting involves increasing exposure when volatility is low and reducing it when volatility is high. Historically this has improved manager Sharpe ratio at the expense of skew. Our MLM Index EV and MLM Global Index EV are constructed a bit differently. While following similar trend following algorithms, positions are sized on exposure, not vol. The net effect is our indices are long changes in volatility, providing higher skew when needed most; in highly volatile markets. This makes intuitive sense; trend following tends to crash up while equity markets tend to crash down. The last thing you want to do is put the brakes on your diversifier while it is crashing up.

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