Skewing Your Portfolio With Managed Futures

The active/passive management debate usually centers on whether managers earn their fees by outperforming an index like the S&P 500, but there is another argument for allocating some of your portfolio to alternative assets. If they are uncorrelated to stocks and bonds then the diversification can help you more than the fees will hurt you, up to a point at least.

Managed futures, about 5% of the hedge fund industry, are a “niche within a niche” that can be difficult to understand, but they’ve outperformed both stock markets and other hedge fund strategies during market downturns for decades.

“When one examines all the declines in the S&P 500 that were greater than 6% since 1980, one finds that managed futures programs...