Monday, January 12, 2009

Does Trend Following Work

Richard Widows wrote in article in the Street.com about trend following strategies in mutual funds. Basically, he claims that they don't work. For his proof, he listed a group of funds with high returns in 2007 and poor returns this year. I do agree that chasing performance doesn't always work especially with sector, single country & regional funds but I don't think that should keep us away from trend following models that do work. I have back tested many trend and momentum models in stocks, funds and commodities, and if done correctly, they can be quite rewarding.

Widow's simple strategy was picking the fund with the highest return. If he had narrowed down his choices to diversified domestic and international funds, I'd take a guess that the returns of those funds would have been fairly OK in relation to the broad market. If you wanted the big returns, the portfolio would need to trade much more frequently, say quarterly or every couple of months (depending on the fund's short term redemption fees). Momentum changes throughout the year and I have found out that by following the momentum through the year you can piggy back on its returns and still perform better than the broad market indexes.

5 comments:

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InTrust Advisors, Inc. said...

Richard Widows article in the Street.com is hogwash. You have to look at trend following over a market cycle. As a I trend follower, I can tell you we did far better than the market in 2008 and then we underperformed in 2009. However on a two year basis, we are well up on the market.

His article fails to realize that all strategies have good and not so good years, but its the multi-year returns vs. a benchmark index that count. I can tell you trend following does work.

Check out a Free resource on trend following at our website www.intrustadvisors.com, called "Make the Trend Your Friend."

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MrIlir said...

It's impossible to understand trends without having a better understanding of economic growth. Alex Gheg has a new consumer theory that gives us a scale for growth that measures previously hidden thoughts. We can measure utility growth using the body clock. Quantity, quality, variety and convenience in one equation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6tFLGpcOpE