Greg Taunt, Author at IASG
As IASG Vice President, Greg Taunt helps clients navigate the futures industry and find the best managers for their risk tolerance and portfolio needs. He specializes in maximizing portfolio effectiveness to potentially reduce risk while increasing returns through managed accounts in non-correlated vehicles.
Previously, Greg served as Midwest Regional Wholesaler for Superfund Asset Management, a $2 billion trend-following CTA working with brokers and registered investment advisors. Before that, he worked in the insurance industry, providing risk management solutions to financial institutions in the Midwest.
Greg holds a B.A. in finance from Michigan State University and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He is licensed as a Series 3 Commodity Broker, a Series 34 Forex Broker, and a Series 7, Series 24, and Series 63 Securities Broker.
Contact Greg via email or 312-561-3147.
Hedging an equity portfolio: Volatility
In our last article, “Why Traditional Hedges Fail,” we opined that most traditional hedges had significant weaknesses and did not have many characteristics of a great hedge. Volatility (long positions in VIX futures), while not perfect, has a number of these favorable characteristics for hedging an equity portfolio. The characteristics of an excellent equity hedge […]
A Better SPY?
Index investing is all the rage now, with over a trillion dollars invested in the SPY and VOO ETFs alone. Low fees coupled with broad market exposure are expected to be better for your portfolio than an actively managed strategy with higher fees. One could argue that as the indices’ components attract more capital flow, […]
When Good News is Bad
My favorite analogy for passive investing describes two men sitting at a bar. One is drunk and the other sober. When the night is over the sober man leads the other home to make sure he gets there safely. Historically, hedge funds and active investors pored over financials, looked at P/E ratios, and listened to […]
Inflation Coming?
Want to play a “fun” game? Go to Google and type “currency crisis (insert any country name)” and see your results. Luckily for Americans, you will find that the United States is one of the few countries that have avoided this designation so far. As one of my Polish friends who immigrated asked me, “Why […]
Futures Contracts are Easy. You are Already Using Them.
I have spent over a decade in the futures industry, so I am accustomed to blank stares when I tell people what I do. Most immediately assume it is too complicated to even try to understand. The ironic thing is that we all intuitively understand them already. We trade them all the time. We can […]
Evaluating Futures Traders: Going Beyond Traditional Search Methods
As one of the world’s largest futures databases, we begin talking to traders often at the earliest stages of their evolution up to billions of dollars in assets. But not all beginnings are equal, as some achieve early success and others never find it. Our challenge is determining which ones provide our investors with the […]
Understanding Minimum Investment Sizes
When launching their programs, managers in the futures space are faced with a dilemma. First, they need to choose a trade level. This is an easy process for an equity manager as they often trade 100% of the cash available and sometimes decide to use leverage. However, ALL futures contracts already have the leverage built-in, […]
Market Sentiment. I feel that you should pay attention.
Market sentiment is a broad term that encompasses the prevailing feeling that investors have about a market. Measuring this “feeling” can be accomplished in a variety of ways. CNNMoney has a Fear and Greed Index that displays this in a simple format showing when investors are most willing to take on risk or hunker down. […]
Investment Portfolio Design for an Unpredictable World
Investors are always faced with choices. My experience tells me that these choices are often driven by simple quirks of human behavior. Two of these that seem to be big drivers seem to be recency bias and a desire for simplification. Both of these naturally make us poor investors. For example, in March of 2020 […]
The Advantages of Professional Traders in the Futures Market
I know a lot about grains. In fact, I know much more than the average person about energies, metals, currencies, softs, and financials. I would never try to trade any of them for customers for a simple reason. I know others who have done nothing for most of their careers except focus on each area. […]
Navigating Investment Choices in a Volatile Market
The stock market just hit an all time high and real estate values continue rising rapidly. Investors could not be happier. The day I refer to, of course, is October 9, 2007 when the S&P closed at its new record of 1565.15. What followed was a bull run in commodities culminating on July 11, 2008 when oil hit its high of $147.27 on dollar weakness and insatiable raw material demand from China. By January of 2009, oil dropped to almost $30 a barrel, the dollar was much stronger as seemingly everyone flocked to its perceived safety, and the worldwide economy would begin digging out slowly from the depths of the credit crisis. The S&P would drop below 700 points.