Even with hindsight, 2018 was a tough year to make money
They say hindsight is 20/20, but apparently not even that could have helped investors make money in 2018. Between volatile stocks, bonds, commodities, and crypto currencies, this year was tough for hedge funds — even an imaginary one (Hindsight LLC) that lives “in a world perpetually 12 months in the future,” John Arthurs wrote in an opinion piece on Bloomberg. “Hindsight was able to exploit one big theme: ‘America First.’ A combination of aggressive trade rhetoric and Federal Reserve tightening on the part of the U.S. made life harder for everyone — and Hindsight, therefore, bet against anything that fell afoul of U.S. policy.”
Whereas Hindsight is usually able to bring in plenty of earnings each year with its time advantage, Arthurs says that only a truly unique combination of all the right moves would have been able to reap benefits. Even then, “the winners won in single digits, and the losers in double digits.”