The following extract is a Top Traders Unplugged summary of a conversation between the podcast hosts Niels and Alan with Marty Lueck, Co-Founder of Aspect Capital.
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Martin Lueck is one of the defining figures of systematic trend following in Europe. He was a co-founder of AHL in the mid-1980s, which became one of the earliest and largest managed futures firms on the continent before being absorbed into Man Group. In 1997 he co-founded Aspect Capital alongside Anthony Todd and others, which has since grown to manage over six billion dollars and earned the Risk.net Quant Investment Firm of the Year award in 2023.
The conversation with Niels and Alan covers the essence of why trend following works, drawing on Lueck’s decades of direct experience with both its rewards and its frustrations. His analogy of trend as medicine is one of the sharpest in the industry: the medicine works, but you have to give it time to do its work. Patients who stop taking it early because they feel nothing yet are the ones who suffer most.
Lueck is also candid about the evolution of Aspect’s approach. The Aspect Diversified Programme began as a trend-only strategy, and it was not until the early 2000s that the firm recognised the need to complement trend signals with non-trend models to buffer the strategy during periods of sharp reversal or trendless drift. This history of honest adaptation, grounded in data rather than client pressure, is one of the reasons Aspect’s institutional reputation has remained so strong.
The discussion also addresses machine learning, CTA replication, and the relationship between research depth and long-run performance.
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