Top Traders Unplugged · Oct 10, 2026 · 78m · 67m saved
With Andrew Beer, co-founder/CEO, Dynamic Beta Investments
Over 27 years, the index that tracks the biggest managed-futures funds has never fallen more than 16% from peak to trough, Andrew Beer said. The broad US bond market's worst fall over the same stretch was 17%.
Bonds sit at the center of most portfolios. Managed futures, funds that bet on price trends in stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities in either direction, are still a small slice, and Beer blamed the way the industry sells itself as much as its returns.
"It's among the most valuable diversifiers you could put in a portfolio." — Andrew Beer
Beer, co-founder and CEO of Dynamic Beta Investments, runs ETFs built to match the returns of the largest managed-futures hedge funds. It is the fourth asset-management business he has started, and his pitch to investors depends on the case he made here.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 78 minutes of audio, 11 minutes of reading.
Here are the 12 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
AI lets one person do the work of four, Beer said, and should set off a new wave of startups
The SG CTA Index was up 15.7% through September, and about 20% over 12 months
Every long-range asset-allocation model rests on guesses, and the guesses are always wrong
The 60/40 portfolio was a historical accident, built on 20 years in which bonds never went down
Managed futures made money in the dot-com crash, the 2008 crisis and 2022
The space has a slightly negative correlation to stocks and about 330 basis points of alpha a year
Its 16% worst drawdown matches bonds, but only for investors who hold several funds
A 0.34 Sharpe ratio, after fees, is respectable next to stocks and bonds
Returns come in lumps, and no manager stays on top for long
Strategic allocation gets investors 90% of the way; tactical strategies can supply the rest
"Trend following" and "managed futures" should be dropped for a friendlier name
Managers should sell the space as a team, not as the one best model
1. AI Lowers the Startup Bar
Beer opened with what artificial intelligence means for careers. He graduated from Harvard Business School in 1994, when, he said, his entrepreneurship professors told students that 8 of 10 startups fail and pushed them toward corporate ladders.
The dot-com boom changed that, and he expects AI to do it again by cutting the cost of starting a business
"You need four people, somebody in accounting, somebody doing this, somebody doing that, is now one person and Claude." — Andrew Beer
He described a friend who runs a home-organizing business with no finance staff, asking Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, how to handle each task. His own firm has seven people but works like 25, he said. His earlier asset managers, all started in the 2000s, had 35, 20 and about 25 staff.
