SI380: Dispersion Is the Story This Year (Group Conversation Part 1)
Top Traders Unplugged
Niels Kaastrup-Larsen
4.8 • 712 Ratings
🗓️ 27 December 2025
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Niels is joined by all 9 amazing co-hosts, to discuss a year that refused to behave. In part one of the annual "roundtable", Niels and the group map why 2025 produced such striking dispersion across trend followers. They revisit the Liberation Day shock and the uncomfortable truth it exposed: results often came down to unglamorous choices like market selection, time horizon, and how quickly risk is resized after clustered volatility and sharp reversals. The conversation then widens to a structural theme: the rapid growth of strategies investors hope will sit outside stocks and bonds, from managed futures and multi strats to structured products, gold, and crypto, plus the liquidity, reflexivity, and selection challenges that follow when everyone reaches for the same diversifier.
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Episode TimeStamps:
00:00 - Opening and introduction to the Systematic Investor Series
02:24 - Setting the agenda for the year-end group discussion
06:04 - Return dispersion and the shock around Liberation Day
10:41 - Market selection versus trend speed as performance drivers
15:17 - Volatility adjustment and why mid-speed models struggled
21:11 - The rapid growth of non correlated assets
26:40 - Liquidity limits and reflexive effects of large inflows
31:23 - Is dispersion healthy or a hurdle for allocators
37:17 - Investor behavior versus strategy outcomes
42:56 - Are model design choices ever truly obvious
46:22 - Objectives, factor exposure, and what investors really buy
50:49 - Dispersion as differentiation or classification problem
57:07 - Evaluating managers in a world of randomness
01:02:02 - How much data is enough to judge performance
01:11:05 - Closing remarks and preview of part two
Copyright © 2025 – CMC AG – All Rights Reserved
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to join Neil's Kostrup Larson on a raw and honest journey into the world of systematic investing and learn about the most dependable and consistent yet often overlooked investment strategy. |
| 0:13.2 | Welcome to the Systematic Investor Series. |
| 0:27.2 | Welcome and welcome back to this week's edition of the Systematic Investor Series with Katie Kaminsky, Jim Kassan, Rob Carver, Mark Rasmzimsky, Rich Brennan, Alan Don, Nick |
| 0:34.6 | Bolters, Andrew Beir, Yovgit, and me, Niels Kastrolassen. |
| 0:39.6 | As you can tell from this introduction today and next week will be very special episodes |
| 0:44.4 | because it's the time of the year where all 10 of us get together for one big conversation and debate. |
| 0:51.4 | So firstly, let me start by thanking all of you for making the time for this |
| 0:56.2 | extended recording today, which I really have been looking forward to. And of course, for all |
| 1:01.7 | the time and energy you put into making every weekly episode that we produce and have published |
| 1:07.8 | this year. It means a lot to me and based on the feedback we get from the |
| 1:12.9 | audience, I know it means a lot to our community. We are recording on December 17th and this conversation |
| 1:20.7 | will be split into two parts and published on December 27th and January 3rd. We have a great |
| 1:27.4 | lineup of topics that all of you shared beforehand. |
| 1:30.5 | And just to mention some of the themes that we will be covering during our conversation this week |
| 1:35.0 | and next, it will be areas such as the impact of market selection on trend following, |
| 1:41.7 | the massive bull cycle in non-correlated investments and how |
| 1:45.1 | three years in, it's still in its infancy. We're going to be discussing the period 2023 to |
| 1:51.1 | 2025, which has been characterized by large dispersion between trend managers. We're going to be |
| 1:57.5 | discussing whether model designs are ever obvious within our world. |
| 2:02.9 | We're also going to be talking about how long or how much data is practically sufficient time |
| 2:09.7 | for allocators to make inference about manager performance. |
| 2:13.8 | We're going to be talking about the process stability in a changing market landscape |
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