018 - Trading Think Tank - Diversification in Trend Following
May 10, 2024
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Experts dive deep into the world of diversification in trend following trading strategies. Topics include market vs. strategy diversification, capital requirements, volatility smoothing, and more. Special focus on the benefits and challenges of diversification in improving risk-adjusted returns and capturing trending opportunities across various markets.
Diversification across markets reduces risk and captures outliers for improved returns.
System diversification breaks down market correlation, enhancing trade distribution benefits.
Maintaining a pure trend following approach can lead to more consistent and potentially higher returns.
Deep dives
The Benefits of Diversification in Trading Multiple Markets
Trading in multiple markets provides diversification benefits by reducing risk, increasing sample size, and capturing outliers for improved returns. A wider market selection allows for uncorrelated trade distributions, enhancing the risk-adjusted returns and reducing volatility drag.
System Diversification and Correlation Management
System diversification helps break down market correlation properties, allowing for uncorrelated trade distributions. By applying multiple uniquely developed trend systems to different markets, the trade outcomes become less correlated, enhancing the diversification benefits in the portfolio.
Trade Management and Position Sizing Strategies
Dynamic position sizing and trade management, while commonly used, may not always add value to trend following strategies. Adjusting positions based on volatility, correlation, or other risk metrics can be costly and may not improve returns. Separating return streams of adjusted and unadjusted systems can help evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies.
The Impact of Trend Following Strategies on Portfolio Performance
Maintaining a pure trend following approach without frequent adjustments in position sizes or trade management can lead to more consistent and potentially higher returns. Trend followers who adhere to a core methodology of long trends and cutting losses short may benefit from the amplification of outlier trades without dilution from excessive trading or adjustment trades.
The Significance of Diversification in Trading
Diversification is crucial in trading to mitigate risk and improve returns. The podcast highlights the importance of expanding market exposure to enhance performance. By trading across various markets such as stocks, futures, and commodities, traders can benefit from decreased correlation and access to diverse profit opportunities. The episode emphasizes that more diverse portfolios lead to stability, higher compound annual growth rates, and reduced drawdowns, ultimately enhancing the trading strategy's effectiveness.
Effect of Increased Diversification on Performance
Increasing diversification positively impacts trading performance. The discussion underscores how higher levels of diversification enhance risk-adjusted metrics and improve the overall portfolio structure. By targeting outliers and trading uncorrelated markets, traders can achieve smoother returns, lower drawdowns, and higher compound annual growth rates. The podcast illustrates that diversification not only reduces volatility drag but also maximizes the representation of nonlinear anomalies, leading to more favorable trading outcomes.
If you have questions, all the answers are here! In this first episode of a new series we are calling the 'Trading Think Tank' we sit down with a panel of experts and really deep-dive a single topic. In this show it's all things diversification.
What do we really mean by diversification anyway? How many markets do we need to trade? If 'more is better', why exactly is that? What is the relative value of diversifying across markets (such as stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities) versus diversifying across strategies (having multiple models of different types, time-frames or parameters)? Can a basket of stocks be 'diversified' or is the risk of their auto-correlation too high, particularly in an extreme event (the one we really care about that can send us broke)? How much capital is required if one wants to trade a diversified range of futures contracts? Are there alternatives, such as trading CFD's? Is it all too complex? Should we overlay volatility smoothing techniques into our models?
In this episode, literally jam-packed with actionable intel, Rich and Simon are joined by Moritz Seibert and Jerry Parker to discuss all of this in detail in the context of trend following.
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