Monthly Archives: January 2019

Asset management, Behavioral finance, Risk management, Trading, Trend following

On model risk in quantitative trading

  • Quantitative strategies have become increasingly popular in trading and investing
  • The experience with using them has been mixed, largely as a result of three categories of problems
  • Still, quantitative approach is well worth exploring and offers important advantages to their users

Over the past few years, the use of quantitative strategies has become increasingly popular in trading and investment management. According to JPMorgan, passive and quantitative investors now account for 60% of equity assets under management (vs. 30% ten years ago) and only about 10% of trading volumes originate from fundamental discretionary traders.[1] Appealing new buzzwords like, robo-advising, artificial intelligence and machine learning stoked the imagination of many investors and boosted the quantitative trading gold rush. Continue reading →

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Commodity price, Commodity risk, Hedging, Oil market, Risk management, Trading, Trend following

Groupthink in commodity price forecasting, its disastrous consequences and how to master price uncertainty

  • In financial and commodity markets, large-scale price events are not predictable. Even so, most market professionals rely on forecasts most heavily in making forward-looking decisions.
  • At times, this has disastrous consequences (see below)
  • Large-scale price events are far and away the greatest source of external risk for commodity-related businesses. Their severity and frequency has been on the increase in recent years.
  • An alternative approach to mastering uncertainty is to explore systematic trend-following strategies which, if used appropriately can turn price risk into a source of profit and hard to match competitive advantage

 

According to the latest Reuters survey, over one thousand energy market professionals expect the oil price to average between $65 and $70 a barrel in the years 2019 through 2023. Only 3% of respondents thought that Brent Crude Oil might increase above $90/bbl next year. So, market experts do not expect any surprises and largely agree that oil price will remain where it is. This groupthink reminds me of a similar situation some 15 years ago. Continue reading →

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Asset management, Commodity price, Commodity risk, Hedging, Market trends, Oil market, Risk management, Trading, Trend following, Uncategorized

How we navigated the oil price roller coaster

Extreme price events are far and away the greatest source of external risk facing oil and gas producers and other energy-dependent companies. Frequency and severity of such events has been increasing dramatically since about 2005/2006 causing ocasionally severe pain for many industry participants.

Case in point was the 70% oil price collapse through 2014 and 2015, from over $100 to below $30 per barrel. In the aftermath of this decline, U.S. mining industry – which includes oil and gas producers – reported losses of $227 billion, wiping out eight previous years’ worth of profits as the following chart shows: Continue reading →

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