SI246: The BIG CTA ETF Debate ft. Andrew Beer & Tim Pickering

Today, we are joined by Andrew Beer and Tim Pickering for a heated debate on some of the most important changes that we are seeing in the CTA industry. We discuss how ETFs can be used in the CTA industry and the pros and cons of using indices to represent manager performance, why Tim and Andrew are fundamentally different in how they approach the way retail investors can access CTA strategies and how they disagree on the definition of "pure alpha", the use of replication strategies and much more.

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Episode TimeStamps:

00:50 - The macro perspective

03:56 - Industry performance update

06:17 - First CTA to launch a ETF

09:57 - The managed futures index - what and why?

17:40 - Tim's experience with indices

20:15 - Building an asset allocation bucket

22:36 - A discussion on alpha

30:58 - Getting exposure to CTA return streams

37:10 - Why Tim would avoid replication strategies

44:18 - The biggest positions drive performance?

51:45 - Are ETFs reliable?

55:47 - Getting the timing right

01:00:49 - A terrible product?

01:04:26 - Why did Tim's US ETF fail?

01:08:07 - What is alpha?

01:11:00 - Are lower fees better for investors?

01:12:14 - Getting the correlation right

01:13:21 - Question from Oliver

01:15:59 -...