Morningstar Advisor - June/July 2013 - (Page 45)

Managed Futures and Cash Rates By Terry Tian Before attempting to cash in on managed-futures funds, understand how these funds use cash. Managed-futures mutual funds introduced the concept of momentum-based futures trading strategies to many investors. Before the first such mutual fund launched in late 2009, managed-futures strategies were only accessible to those who had the wherewithal to open a futures trading account and several hundred thousand dollars to invest. Now, 50 different managed-futures mutual funds are available to all types of investors, with minimum investments as low as $500. These funds often lure investors with statistics such as the near-zero long-term correlations to stocks and bonds, as well as the amazing historical returns of various managed-futures industry indexes. What the fund marketing materials, and even academic literature, fail to explain, however, is how many of these historical returns were attributable to high interest rates. After all, since short-term interest rates dropped to near-zero levels at the end of 2008, managed-futures strategies have languished. In this article, we estimate the proportion of cash returns of managed-futures trading programs (both private pools and separate account composites) in the Morningstar MSCI Systematic Trading Hedge Fund Index (which had 128 constituents as of January 2013) and the relationship between interest rates and managed-futures returns. Cash Efficiency Unlike traditional investments, such as stocks and bonds, futures contracts are traded on margin. This means that an investor needs only a small percentage of the total (notional) value of the contract up front (about 5% for the E-mini S&P 500 contract, for example). Margin requirements are higher for more-volatile assets, such as some commodity contracts. Often, managed-futures trading programs only use 15% of their assets for margin (this is called the margin/equity ratio).1 The rest of the assets sit in cash-like instruments, typically short-term U.S. Treasuries. This special structure enables managers to easily adjust a managed-futures fund’s leverage to match their clients’ risk appetites (a two times leveraged program, for example, would use 30% of the total account assets for margin purposes, instead of 15%), and it also frees up the capital to earn additional short-term interest-rate returns aside from the futures strategy returns. Excess Returns of Managed Futures Many studies touting the benefits of managedfutures returns often fail to mention that these returns come from both futures trading as well as from interest earned on the cash collateral. For example, Schneeweis, Spurgin, and Szado (2012) studied the return drivers of three indexes—Barclay CTA Index, CISDM CTA Asset Weighted Index, and CSFB/Tremont Managed Futures Index, each of which had returned more than 6% annualized between 1994 and 2009—but do not delve into the effects of interest rates on the funds’ returns.2 In today’s near-zero interest-rate environment, the returns on cash seem negligible, but over the period studied, short-term interest rates were much higher. Looking at our own data, the Morningstar MSCI Systematic Trading Index returned an annualized 8.6% between January 1994 and December 2012, while three-month U.S. Treasuries returned an annualized 3.1%. If we assume that the index constituents invested 85% of their assets in three-month Treasuries and 15% in futures contracts (which results in a notional exposure of more than 100% of assets), the cash portion would have contributed 2.6% of the returns over the time period 1 Based upon commodity-trading-advisors programs that disclose this information in Morningstar’s hedge fund database. 2 “Managed Futures: A Composite CTA Performance Review,” by Thomas Schneeweis, Richard Spurgin, and Edward Szado. MorningstarAdvisor.com 45 http://www.MorningstarAdvisor.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Morningstar Advisor - June/July 2013

Morningstar Advisor - June/July 2013
Contents
Contributors
Letter From the Editor
Not Your Values
How Do You Use Alternatives for Clients?
Working to Build a Niche
How to Put Buffett’s Investing Philosophy into Practice
Sophisticated Strategies for the Masses
Investments á la Carte
Investment Briefs
The Percentile Trap
Defense Firms Will Stay Aloft
Beware the Lure of Diversification
Using Alternatives in Practice
Managed Futures and Cash Rates
The World Is Getting Grayer
Waiting to Pull Up Anchor
The Price of Managing Volatility
Let’s Get Back to Basics
Our Favorite Mutual Funds
50 Most-Popular Equity ETFs
Undervalued Stocks With Wide Moats
Mutual Fund Urban Myths

Morningstar Advisor - June/July 2013