If we have to lose money, we had better at least learn something.
2018 is over and we made as much progress as ever in understanding the true essence of what we do. We have spent the past 5 years in the top decile of systematic global macro traders and as of this year are slightly below the middle of the pack. While we would have liked to have been a little smarter this year, the problem with being 'smarter' – or different than we were – is that the 'smarter' version is prone to other risks in a different form. Still, we continued to learn a lot about how we take risk, and how we want to take risk moving forward.
We were not at our best as we had some allocations to models with risks that could have been avoided. We are very good at what we do and we have a great product in our Global Asset Allocation (GAA) Systematic Global Macro strategy – and an even better process for building portfolios. But, as this year highlights, products have a very difficult time truly standing on their own in a client’s portfolio. Parts of our portfolio were not only up on the year, but also had return streams that were complementary to traditional portfolios and well ahead of their relevant benchmarks.