Jim Simons expressed his views about trend-following during a TED interview.
Revised February 21, 2019.
During a Ted interview, Jim Simons showed a commodity chart and talked about how in the past traders were able to use 20 days of prices (and their average) as a predictor of future prices (about 10:00 minutes from the start).
Jim Simons argued that trend-following no longer works. But some academic papers base the efficacy of trend-following on t-statistics derived from long-term data series and very slow-moving averages.
In my book, Fooled by Technical Analysis, I discuss the perils of using t-statistic and hypothesis testing in trading system development. Using a t-statistic is a rudimentary mistake. If you have 100 years of data, even a horrible Sharpe ratio in the order of 0.30 will generate a high t-statistic, as follows:
t-statistic = Sharpe ratio × SQRT(number of years)
For a Sharpe ratio of 0.30 in 100 years, the t-statistic is 3.00. Does this mean that a trading system is significant? What about if the drawdown is -50%? Do fund managers like a -50% drawdown? Some close shop after a -10% drawdown.
Thus, the first problem is that long-term backtests can be misleading. Especially problematic are backtests on a basket of commodities because of hindsight bias.
Then, another problem is that when one tests many choices of parameters, data-mining bias is introduced due to multiple comparisons. The whole procedure usually followed is based on multiple comparisons of different moving average crossover values and testing periods. In this case, the t-statistic must be adjusted and significance is lost, as Harvey and Liu showed in their paper.
More importantly…
The argument is not whether someone today can or cannot find a trend-following system that will work. This is possible and such systems may exist. The argument is about changing market conditions that render short-term trends following unprofitable.
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