An Investing Playbook for These Uncertain Times
Almost everything is down this year. A rare bright spot? A backwater called trend following.
Illustration: Evan Weselmann for Bloomberg Businessweek
It’s easy to spot the trend followers at back-to-school time: Just look for the kids wearing the coolest sneakers. It’s easy to spot them in the markets these days, too. Look for fund managers with returns that are so hot they make most other types of investors look as if they’re sporting a pair of worn-out Keds.
It’s been a banner year for financial trend followers: It’s a style of investing dedicated to what the markets are actually doing, rather than what some expert thinks they should do. The benchmark gauge, Societe Generale SA’s SG Trend Index, is up 27% so far in 2022, poised for its best year in data since the start of this century.