The last few months have been a fantastic case for the role of managed futures in a portfolio. Managed futures do well in periods of macro volatility, and this time is no different. What investment, that can be measured passively, has done well this year? Short term treasuries? Nope. The Bloomberg US Treasury 1-3 Year Index is down 1.5% YTD (through Feb 14, 2022). Stocks? Nope, the S&P 500 TR Index is down 7.5% and the Nasdaq-100 TR Index is down 12.5%. Real Estate? The Real Estate Select Sector TR Index is down 13.2% YTD. Some of the tail risk and long vol strategies were also down. How about managed futures? The MLM Index EV (15V) is up 10.3% YTD. So why is it that managed futures have not gained wider acceptance as a portfolio element? There is a lot of blame to go around. Let’s have a look.

All the issues around managed futures arise from the character of the returns. Managed futures have positive skew, the profile of an option buyer. Lots of small losses (like premium paid), with occasional big gains. This is the reverse of the stock market, where the market goes up in small steps and down in a whoosh (negative skew). The attraction to managed futures is that the big gains are often at the same time as the stock market whoosh, like this year, and that they can capture that convexity whether it’s being driven by market moves up or down. Risk parity models try a similar approach – using bonds to diversify stocks, but that only holds when bonds go up. Sometimes its bonds falling that cause the equity whooshes. Sound familiar? Being able to generate convexity on both sides is a big improvement. The character of managed futures returns breeds a lot of behavioral biases on the part of investors. But first, let’s look at the managers.

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