What did Debenhams do wrong?

The ICMA have just published a guide to best practice in the European Repo Market.This important document was written by Richard Comotto, Senior Visiting Fellow at the ICMA Centre for the ICMA's European Repo Council. It represents the most comprehensive set of recommendations for trading and settlement, and codification of market conventions, in any repo market and is likely to provide a model to other markets. It will also be an essential aide to researchers, commentators and policy-makers.

There has been a lot of anecdotal discussion around the volatility of the price of bitcoin and whether or not a bubble is currently present in cryptocurrencies. Much of this impassioned debate is based around speculative trading activities but what would be the outcome if we considered its place as part of a balanced portfolio of investments?

Momentum trading is a popular strategy in the commodity futures markets. The idea is simple. Suppose that an investor wants to invest in the first nearby contract of several commodity markets, e.g. crude oil, live cattle and gold. At the end of each month, the trader ranks these assets according to their past return performance, observed over a measurement period of 12 months for example, from the top performing asset to the bottom performing asset. The investor opens a long position in the first nearby of the markets that performed well and a short position in the first nearby of the markets that underperformed. These positions are held throughout the next month. This strategy has performed historically well historically and has attracted the interest of investors.