What worldview does the system execute?

The system is motivated by a very broad interpretation of the universe. The underlying belief is that economic systems adjust to changes in fundamentals gradually and over long periods of time, and that the consequent trends are evident everywhere in human history and commerce. Political, economic and social regime changes trigger price adjustments in markets that don’t happen instantaneously. For example, the growth and decline of the Roman Empire took place, not in a day, but over hundreds of years.

A major problem, of course, is that markets don’t move from one state to another in a straight line: there are periods of countertrend shock and volatility. We spend most of our time trying to find ways to deal with those unsettling but inevitable events. That being said, it is really not difficult to put together a simple trend-following system that can generate positive returns over a realistic holding period – and there are many, many commercial systems that have been generating strong, albeit volatile, returns for a long time. So there are definitely firm grounds for believing in Santa Claus.

Unfortunately, despite all the evidence, many find it hard to accept the inherent return in trend-following. Directional trading is a much harder sell than a hedge fund style such as market neutral equity, where investors take the view that the trader is basically preying on short-term price imbalances created by institutional order flow. Pure trend-followers pay offers and hit bids, and that puts some people off because of a deep-seated reluctance to cross spreads. So I find myself pursuing the strategy because of its superior absolute profitability and because it is intellectually challenging, rather than because it is the most convenient product commercially.

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