Four Steps To Avoiding A Crowded Position

With few attractive investment opportunities and an increasingly homogenous investor base (long only, real money), the danger of getting caught in a crowded position is both more dangerous and harder to avoid. Because the problem is becoming so much more common, Citi analyst Stephen Antczak, along with Jung Lee and Swati Verma, has worked up what he calls a ‘work in progress’ approach to identifying crowded positions and deciding whether to stay out.

Steps to avoid crowded positions

First step

The first step is to look for unusual flows. Antczak takes the straightforward approach of using a sectors size relative to the market to estimate expected flows. So if the banking sector accounts for 20 percent of the...