SI426: The Hard Part Isn't Buying Trend Following ft. Yoav Git

Yoav Git (0:01)

You know, CTAs are difficult to live with. You go down the stairs, come up the elevators, you might have three years with no performance. Your investment committee will look at you like an idiot. Why did you allocate this trend?

SPEAKER_2 (0:13)

Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged. In markets, success doesn't come from predicting what happens next. It comes from being prepared for what you can't predict.

In each episode, we go deep with some of the world's most thoughtful minds in investing, economics and beyond to understand how they think, how they prepare and how they decide, and the experiences that shaped how they see the world. No noise, no shortcuts, just real conversations to help you think better and invest with confidence.

Alan Dunne (0:46)

Welcome back to Top Traders Unplugged, where each week we take the pulse of the market from the perspective of a rules-based investor. My name is Alan Dunne. I'm sitting in this week for Niels, who is away traveling, and great to have Yoav with me this week. Yoav, how are you?

Yoav Git (1:02)

Oh, pleasure.

Absolutely wonderful, actually. I'm just back to this country and enjoying the beautiful but very cold weather.

Alan Dunne (1:12)

Yes. Same here in Dublin. It's gone chilly, but lovely kind of winter sun, but definitely a bit cooler. And where are we on your travels?

Yoav Git (1:22)

Oh, all around. I've been to the USA, and then I've been to the Middle East, and now I'm back in the UK and just preparing for Christmas. It's very exciting.

Alan Dunne (1:32)

Good stuff. Me and Spies. We're into the final run-in already. Yeah. Was it five or six weeks to go? So that's pretty crazy.

But lots to talk about as ever. November has kicked off. It's been an interesting month, I suppose we would say. Interesting in inverted commas for CTAs, but we'll get to that.

But what's been on your radar?

Yoav Git (1:57)

Oh, actually, because it's the end of the year, we're beginning the process of internships.

We've been running internships for many, many years, and we're looking for somebody in research, and we're looking for somebody in technology. We have someone already in business development. And I find it really exciting. I mean, in the days of AI, people kind of tend to think that investing in juniors is not something that you should do, right? Because you can replace them with AI. But actually, I think it's actually really important to develop the skills. Even the skills of using AI, I think a lot of people coming from university just have a very limited experience of how to use it, in certainly the company setting. And I think it's really important in investing in the next generation. And the way you kind of do that is by giving a meaningful project. I think the, like, it's very, I've been to many banks where interns, you know, gets exposure to what's going on, don't, basically shadowing somebody more senior, but actually don't get to do their own work.

And I think it's really important. The value comes from giving the meaningful projects that they can do. And we've been very lucky in the past. And I think, I hope that we're going to be lucky in the future, but we're just writing the spec for that. And that has been keeping me busy.

Alan Dunne (3:24)

Great. Well, I'm sure that's a great opportunity for anybody, any young researchers or programmers or whatever out there interested in developing a career, that would be a great opportunity. Have you started the interviewing process? Yes, or what kind of a candidate?

Yoav Git (3:40)

No, it's just about to go on the website for the application.

Alan Dunne (3:45)

Okay, very good. Well, no doubt, there will be a huge influx of applications there on the back of this project.

Yoav Git (3:54)

The problem that young people have is that youth unemployment in this country is enormous, and it's actually very difficult to go through the process of finding a position. My problem is not lack of applications, it's actually the opposite. I think it just reflects the sad reality is that a lot of companies are just cutting back on the hiring process, and it makes it very difficult for them.

Alan Dunne (4:26)

Interesting. Yeah, no, definitely it's from my own experience. Interviewing people at that stage, they seem to have all the right credentials.

These days, high academics, manage funds, participated in various entities, it's a university and have done all of that. It seems like the competition is stronger and greater than ever, but anyway, best of luck with that. We have a great lineup, some really interesting topics that we're going to get into around building CTA portfolios and what it can do for your overall portfolio and all of that. So maybe just to talk about performance first, I did mention it being an interesting month so far for CTA. So it's been a tough month. Obviously, we've seen the bond market sell-off correcting from, I suppose, from early October and that's carried forward into the early part of November. Obviously, we've had volatility in the equity market as well.