MANAGED FUTURES are an essential part of the investment industry. Within this arena, managed futures professionals--also known as Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs)--actively manage client assets using global futures and other derivative securities.

Authors Galen Burghardt and Brian Walls--part of Newedge USA, a global multi-asset brokerage firm based out of Chicago--have extensive experience in the managed futures space, and now, with Managed Futures for Institutional Investors, they address the issues that will allow you to gain a firm understanding of this field and improve the performance of your portfolios through the use of CTAs.

Divided into three comprehensive parts, the book opens with a detailed discussion of how this specific industry works. Here, everything from cash management practices and calculating a rate of return on something that has no net liquidating value is covered. You'll also gain insights on the most common vehicles for investing in CTAs, including funds, platforms, and managed accounts.

Part Two, Building Blocks, offers some informative answers to the tough questions surrounding CTAs. Throughout this section, Burghardt and Walls touch on a number of topics, such as how trend following works and what active management of CTA investments really costs. Along the way, they also show how to put a CTA's drawdown experience in perspective and take a close look at how the single most important source of volatility in world financial markets affects the relationship between stock returns and CTA returns.

Rounding out this in-depth look at CTAs and managed futures, Part Three, Portfolio Construction, examines how the predictability of volatility and correlation can be used to build portfolios that into the things that will help, and hinder, you in creating a well-diversified portfolio. They also show how to identify low correlation reliably and where the past, in fact, does reveal something useful about the future.

Using futures as part of any actively managed portfolio is essential. This reliable guide offers a practical look at what CTAs and futures are all about, and how they can be used to evaluate and meet risk, return, and liquidity objectives.