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"Over the years, I have allocated to a lot of short term CTAs… but due to the alpha decay factor to short-term models, not really made any money from it." - John Fidler (Tweet) Welcome to Top Traders Round Table, a podcast series on managed futures brought to you by CME Group. On today's episode, guest host Ranjan Bhaduri continues his conversation with John Fidler, Senior VP and Director of Alternative Investments at Commonwealth Bank and Trust, Christopher Vogt, Director of Equity Strategies at Margaret Cargill Philanthropies, and Jonathan Miles, Managing Director of Ascent Private Capital Management of U.S. Bank. Listen in as our guests talk about management fees and how they have changed over the past decade, the importance of constantly checking your assumptions, and what wisdom they would give to young up and coming investors. Subscribe on: In This Episode, You'll Learn: Why John and Jonathan don't spend much time looking at short-term CTAs How fee compression has changed management fees over the last decade When our guests choose discretionary over systematic managers The role of alternatives in a portfolio, and why Christopher doesn't call them alternatives "I would urge people to be cynical, and what I mean by that is Wall Street is about product creation, not about performance." - Christopher Vogt (Tweet) Why Christopher urges people interested in the investment space to be cynical Why in a world of complex models, John sees simplicity as a good thing The most important decisions in Jonathan's work, and why they aren't necessarily financial decisions Why many people's view of model risk can hurt them and their investments Why macro strategies will always remain strong This episode was sponsored by: Links Mentioned: The Impact of Crowding in Alternative Risk Premia Investing Hedge Funds Are Not an Asset Class: Implications for Institutional Portfolios Connect with our guests: Learn more about John Fidler and Commonwealth Bank and Trust Learn more about Jonathan Miles and Ascent Private Capital Management of U.S. Bank Learn more about Christopher Vogt and Margaret Cargill Philanthropies "Everybody understands management and incentive fees. Let's just set it in such a way that investors feel it's fair." - Jonathan Miles (Tweet) Full Transcript The following is a full detailed transcript of this conversion. Click here to subscribe to our mailing list, and get full access to our library of downloadable eBook transcripts! Niels Welcome back to Top Traders Round Table, a podcast series on managed futures brought to you by CME Group, where our guest host today, Ranjan Bhaduri, continues his conversation with Jonathan Miles, John Fidler and Christopher Vogt where they discuss how managed futures should fit into your portfolio allocation and why you should still believe in these strategies even if there have been a few challenging years. So without further ado, let's rejoin the conversation.  Ranjan So, going back to some of what Jonathan stated about risk premia and alternative beta, I agree that there are cheaper ways to get trend following today, and that has had an impact on the entire managed futures' fee structure, even including managers that are not doing trend following. It's also forcing a lot of trend followers to adapt or be left behind in terms of adapting, in terms of offering more competitive fees, and increasing their suite of products - so, new types of programs or trying to explore via other techniques.   The short-term CTAs (mentioning about the alpha decay) is also a very interesting comment there because that has lasted for... In some ways, the empirical evidence seems to suggest that short-term CTAs have a shorter lifespan than trend following CTAs. The corollary of that is that it might be more challenging in identifying a quality short-term CTA. From an investment lens, are any of you looking at short-term CTAs? If so, what are the kinds of things that you look for?   Jonathan