TTU59: The Return of Volatility ft. Bastian Bolesta of Deep Field Capital
Top Traders Unplugged
Niels Kaastrup-Larsen
4.8 • 712 Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2015
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bastian Bolesta reviews 2014 and details the ups and downs of the year for his firm and the managed futures industry as a whole. In this episode, he discusses the start to the year that he wants to forget, the return of seemingly normal volatility, and the profitable 4th quarter.
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In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- How the first half of 2014 was a continuation of 2013 for Deep Field Capital.
- How the “fellows” in their trading program evolved during the year.
- What markets contributed to their growth.
- What markets they lost in during 2014.
- The automated system they use to choose what markets they trade.
- How the markets started to behave in a more “normal” way in the second part of 2014.
- What his highlight was for the year.
- Why to be careful of accepting assets that are chasing past performance.
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Resources & Links Mentioned in this Episode:
For more of Bastian, listen to 2 hour-long episodes with him here and here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What we learned from that and what probably one can transfer to what the space as a whole should certainly do in the next days and weeks ahead is to make sure that whoever is actually investing in the strategies now really understands why strategies made money in 2014, why they potentially can make money in 2015, but really explain investors |
| 0:24.1 | what are the driving factors, that it's not just a wonderbox where every single months |
| 0:28.8 | and yeah, you will now make money because it just happened in 2014. |
| 0:36.6 | This is Bastien Bolesta, co-founder and CEO of Deepfield Capital in Zook, Switzerland, |
| 0:41.8 | and you're listening to my year-in review on Top Traders Unplugged. |
| 0:46.2 | Imagine spending an hour with the world's greatest traders. |
| 0:50.0 | Imagine learning from their experiences, their successes, and their failures. |
| 0:54.4 | Imagine no more. |
| 0:56.3 | Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged, the place where you can learn from the best hedge fund managers in the world, |
| 1:02.0 | so you can take your manager due diligence or investment career to the next level. |
| 1:07.0 | Here's your host, veteran hedge fund manager, Niels Kastrop Larson. |
| 1:24.5 | Welcome back, Bastion, for this review of 2014, where we look at the big events from the point of view of your trading strategy. I want to explore both the |
| 1:28.2 | ups and the downs as well as the big takeaway from what can only be described as a great year |
| 1:33.6 | for systematic trading strategies in general. But as you and I know, just because you're systematic |
| 1:39.1 | in your trading, it doesn't mean necessarily that your strategy deals with market events in a similar way. |
| 1:46.1 | So let's jump right into it. |
| 1:49.4 | Tell me about 2014 from your perspective. |
| 1:53.1 | How did the year evolve for your firm and your strategy? |
| 1:57.5 | Hi, Neil. |
| 1:58.0 | Thank you very much for having us again. |
| 1:59.9 | It's a good opportunity to look at this very, very exciting year, particularly because it has be so different on the first half in comparison to the second one. Let's start with the more tricky part. In the first half, it was basically from our perspective how singularity trades, you might remember it's a highly reactive trading program, trading hundreds of strategy combinations across these different asset classes, picking it on a monthly basis in an allocation process. |
| 2:28.7 | So from this highly reactive perspective, the first half of 2014 was a continuation of 2013, or autumn |
... |
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