The following extract is a Top Traders Unplugged summary of a conversation between the podcast hosts Niels and Alan with Brian Proctor, Managing Director at EMC Capital Advisors.
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EMC Capital Advisors carries one of the most direct lineages in the trend-following industry. The firm was founded by Elizabeth Cheval, a participant in the original Turtle Programme run by Richard Dennis and Bill Eckhardt in the 1980s. Brian Proctor, himself a Turtle trader who began his futures career in 1982 on the floors of the Chicago exchanges, has been with the firm since 2003 and manages business development alongside the firm’s core research and trading operations.
What makes the EMC conversation distinctive is the candour with which Proctor describes how the firm has evolved from its Turtle roots without abandoning the philosophy that made those origins work. The breakout systems Cheval originally implemented were substantially overhauled in the late 1990s, replaced by trend and momentum models that better reflected a changing market structure. Risk management was recalibrated. Systems were diversified across timeframes and signal types. The core principle, that price contains all relevant information and that trends persist, remained intact.
EMC allocates roughly half its risk to commodity markets, giving it a materially different profile from many CTAs that are more concentrated in financial instruments. In this TTU Miniseries conversation, Proctor discusses what it means to stay true to trend following while continuously improving the systems that implement it, why the distinction between trend following and momentum matters, and how a firm with deep historical roots continues to find new markets worth trading.
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