TimingCube team starts new advisory

FWR Staff

22 September 2005

TimingCube team puts “trend following” at the core of its investment strategy. The team behind TimingCube, an investment method based on spotting stock and sector trends, has started a company called MarketTrend Advisors to sell a higher-touch version TimingCube’s methodology to small- and mid-size financial firms and independent investment advisors. The TimingCube method aims to outperform the market while minimizing downside risk.

Austin-based MarketTrend says it “is one of a few money-management firms ‘trend following’ as a core investment strategy.” It tracks “four or five” major equity indices with index-based equities and runs those through TimingCube’s mathematical algorithms “looking for signals in the market,” according to a spokeswoman for the firm. MarketTrend adds in its website blurb that “unlike traditional buy and hold positions, MarketTrend investing avoids – and actually benefits from – market downturns to achieve outstanding risk-adjusted returns.”

MarketTrend says the TimingCube method has garnered far higher returns than a traditional “buy and hold” approach.

Choices

Customization is another hallmark of MarketTrend’s approach, according to Don Lansing, MarketTrend’s chief investment officer. “We build portfolios one at a time using the goals and risk tolerances of our clients using exchange-traded funds, mutual funds, stocks, bonds and options to meet our clients' objectives,” he says.

Lansing adds that MarketTrend’s approach is especially suited to risk-adverse investors. “We are very sensitive to the risk-tolerance level of investors,” he says. “By limiting account exposure to the negative turns in the market, we can consistently deliver outstanding performance.”

That makes MarketTrend’s investing style especially attractive to well-heeled investors –professionals, small-business owners and corporate executives – who are approaching retirement, says the firm’s spokeswoman.

MarketTrend offers several service options. Clients can license TimingCube’s “internal signal” and handle the trades themselves, or they can have MarketTrend look after the accounts day to day. In any case, custody stays with the client’s broker. The offering an advisory firm chooses usually “depends on the client’s comfort or desire,” says the spokeswoman for MarketTrend. “Some want a high-touch, full service approach as a white-label offering to clients; others want to manage the portfolios themselves.”

The new company “is the full-service extension of our do-it-yourself TimingCube trend-following product,” says MarketTrend president Serge Dacic. “Many professional advisors want to direct a portion of their clients' portfolios to profit from stock market movement both up and down.”

MarketTrend’s spokeswoman says the company is starting out with about $50 million in client assets under management. Lansing says he expects that to grow to $75 million by the end of this year. –FWR