THE REAL-TIME TREND TRADING EXPERIMENT ™

Individuals

Institutions

LEARN. TRACK. COMPARE. ™

Do you have natural trading talent?
FIND OUT

RESEARCH AND WHITEPAPERS

• Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
• Futures Mag - Jun 2016
• CFM - Two Centuries of Trend Following
• AQR - A Century of Evidence on Trend-Following Investing
• Original Turtle Rules

LEARN

The dividing line between investing and speculating is as blurred as it has ever been, and you are offered a choice: should you entrust your investments to money management professionals, or should you "do it yourself"? To be sure, nobody is going to watch your hard-earned money as closely as you will, but in order to do so effectively you should develop your trading tools, mindset and plan, or risk losing your assets.

Past performance is never any indication of future returns and there is alway a risk of loss, but in our opinion based upon a large body of statistical evidence of reported manager returns over many years, trend following strategies offer some of the best and most consistent returns while providing valuable diversification away from strategies that are simply "long equities".

Begin your trend following journey with this famous Trader's Apprentice True/False exam. Take this exam again months or years from now to see how your views have changed over time with more experience. Next we recommend you read these timeless classics and subscribe to these podcasts listed in increasing order of difficulty from left to right:

If you are seeking some magic formula for guaranteed quick profits, we must unfortunately disappoint you. Your trend trading journey will be a difficult one involving losses. It will not be easy, but it may be worth it. As the expressions goes "there are many paths to Rome" and this is indeed true of investing and speculation - trend following may not be the only arrow in your quiver though it sure could become one of your most important.

Indeed, within the trend following trading community there are many different approaches, methods and portfolio selections in use. They all, however, seem to share one common theme centered around strong risk management: cut short thy losses and allow your winners run.

Futures

Equities

Cryptos

TRACK

If sunlight is considered to be the best disinfectant, then "timestamps + prices" published in a timely manner to many subscribers may be the best way to ensure transparency for any hypothetical real-time trading model. Depending on desired frequency of service, our subscribers receive email/text notifications and accompanying charts for all model portfolio model trades while we keeb tabs on performance results, or they may engage on the website as needed for even more key performance statistics.

We should note that since these trading signals are not actually sent to market, there are many inherent problems when utilizing hypothetical returns. But you might also ask yourself: if you wait for say 6 months on a trading signal and are in the trade for say 50+ days, are a few tics of slippage here or there really gonna make-or-break a model? The model would not be very robust if it did... We always err on the side of caution when representing hypothetical performance results.

In his book, "Outliers: The Story of Success", Malcolm Gladwell suggests that achieving the "10,000-Hour Rule" is the key to success in any field. He says that expertise is simply a matter practicing a specific task for a long time, which can be accomplished with 20 hours of work a week for ten years. Here at The Transparent Index Group, the members of our research team all have well over 60,000 years of trend following, and understand that some things which may come easy to us may not be so automatic for others. The sooner you begin your trend following observations, the better off you will be and we stand ready to help you to become a better trend trader if you decide to go it alone, or a more informed investor if you decide to invest with a trend following manager.

COMPARE

See exactly how the sausage is made, and then:

• How is the model portfolio performing compared to other trend following managers' performance?
• How is the model portfolio performing compared to the S&P 500?
• Which instruments in the model portfolio are contributing to performance?
• Are you positioned with the trend or against the trend?

These are all excellent questions that we can help you to answer and understand well. It is our hope that the next time someone asks you what you think about "the market", you'll be able to answer "which one?".

 

CRYPTOS AND EQUITIES

In response to high demand, we began to roll out public beta testing of similar techniques applied to the Crypto and Equities markets in early 2022. These hypothetical trades are monitored at end of day only, and the model is slightly different from the Diversified Futures Portfolio. No matter if you are just beginning your trend following journey or if you are a seasoned expert, for whatever markets you are looking at there's a good chance we've got your interests covered.