We were pleased to wrap up the MFA conference with two meetings with some great CTAs. Last night, Jeff Eizenberg had the chance to sit down with Andy Schneider (VP Institutional Marketing) and Jon Caplis (Research Manager) from Campbell & Company. With close to 150 employees, $3 billion in assets under management, and a research team stacked with more mathematicians, scientists, economists, engineers and advanced degrees than you can shake a stick at, they, in our opinion, have a first-class operation underway. Their managed futures and trend following strategies were established in 1972! That’s one heck of a track record.

We also got to meet with Brian Proctor of EMC, and we’ve got to say, their back story is about as cool as they come. Brian used to run Richard Dennis’ trading operation, and Liz Cheval was one of the original turtles, so the whole firm is run by some of the most experienced people in the business. Interestingly, Liz is a majority owner in the firm, which classifies the firm as “minority-owned”- opening up all kinds of unique opportunities for them. Another issue brought up in the meeting that struck a cord with us was their willingness to embrace volatility. For example, in 2008, when oil was fluctuating between $100 and $145, many were backing out of the game. EMC, on the other hand, jumped in the game by getting short at $125 and rode it down to make $50  on the trade (past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results).

As our meetings come to a close, we’ve got to say, this was a decidedly different MFA. We’ll post our reflections on the conference as a whole later today.