That led to the sell-off in equities, likely exacerbated by forced selling by
commodity trading advisers and by delta hedging among those shorting options and volatility targeted strategies.
For Wall Street, the big worry is that complying with those restrictions may force their brokers who facilitate futures transactions to register as
commodity trading advisers -- a label that brings unwanted regulatory burdens.
Trend-following hedge funds, sometimes referred to as systematic investors or
commodity trading advisers, were distinctly out of fashion at the start of the year, with the sector having struggled with high levels of correlation between the assets they traded.
The Trend Following Bible shows individual traders and investors how to profit from this approach by trading like today's top
commodity trading advisers.
"We've had a pretty big sell-off over the last couple of days, and CTAs (
commodity trading advisers) have been getting out.
"It is pretty busy with a lot of activity coming from the CTAs (
Commodity Trading Advisers)," a London Metal Exchange floor trader said.
Japan's Nikkei average ended higher on Monday, reversing early losses with help from futures-led buying by
commodity trading advisers and month-end window dressing by foreign investors who picked up blue-chip cyclical shares.
The term "managed futures" refers to a 30-year-old industry made up of professional money managers who are known as "
commodity trading advisers" (CTAs).