Titan launches its mobile ‘not a hedge fund’

I don't know how do they select the 20 names from hedge fund filings (looking only at their long positions, as they don't disclose short positions), but it seems that diversification is not one of the criteria. Virtually all of them are tech (IT/Telecom).

The 0-20% short (using inverse ETFs! [1]) is inactive, so no hedge at all currently on this overexposed portfolio. If (when) there is a large correction it may not be enough to ensure the loses are lower than for the market even assuming that they do it in time (surely it worked well in the backtests).

But hey, it's just 1% and runs (only) on your iPhone!

[1] They track the inverse performance well each day but can diverge over longer periods and have other risks that make them not-so-good as hedges. But anyway is just 20% of the long exposure...

Their strategy looks highly overfitted in terms of establishing the short position.

It’s easy to beat the market in a bull market (just buy momentum stocks or use leverage). It’s hard to determine when the bull market ends and the bear market begins however, which is what’s required if the strategy can truly beat the index long term.

13F filings that they use are all public knowledge that has been priced in. Furthermore funds aren’t required to provide information on their short positions and derivatives, so I struggle to imagine that they can do anything beyond “these are top 20 institutionally owned stocks” weighted by past performance of those institutions, which in itself is not an indicator of future returns.

As others have mentioned, ~95% of people should only invest in index funds. They are wasting their money if they actively manage it or put it into a managed fund.

The value add of a hedge fund is its sophisticated research. Hedge funds have analysts who are looking at satellite images showing the number of cars in parking lots to determine whether sales at Best Buy are up this year, PhDs creating ML models that incorporate behavioral finance, that sort of thing.

It seems like Titan operates in a space directly between these two business models - higher fees without the sophisticated research. Its return over the past year is promising, but you can't really evaluate the performance over such a short time frame. I'm very skeptical, but hoping to be proved wrong.

huh? RH's success comes from letting people play wall street hot shot trader for free. "OMG did you hear what Musk just said?".

If they think they're capturing the same kind of audience attention with a managed portfolio then they legit don't know which way is up.

>Titan picks the top 20 stocks based on data mined from the most prestigious hedge funds

That's index ETF thinking. The real hedge funds invest in opportunities that aren't even listed. You don't make hedge fund type return without hardcore research & hardcore risk taking on the basis of that research.

The whole "hedge fund" thing might make for decent initial PR but I predict this will backfire when people don't get the immediate visceral return they expected. Acorn's "Invest & grow" type PR slogans are better if you are going for managed because it'll align with the return.

The question is if you dont follow the passive ETF/index strategy what do you do? In that regard i suppose its better than doing nothing.