Dave Moenning, Director of Institutional Consulting, Captures Top Honors in the NAAIM Investing Strategy Competition
Littleton, CO – May 7, 2018 – Long-time financial professional Dave Moenning, Director of Institutional Consulting located in Denver, Colorado, took home first place in the 2018 National Association of Active Investment Managers (NAAIM) Shark Tank. The competition was held in conjunction with the NAAIM Uncommon Knowledge conference in Orlando, Florida at the end of April.
NAAIM’s Shark Tank was launched in 2013 to provide NAAIM members with an opportunity to showcase their active investment strategies, models and signals and provide the membership with new ideas in asset management and opportunities to develop beneficial relationships with other active managers. Managers have up to seven minutes to make a presentation of their investment approach and results. A panel of judges and audience ratings determine the best strategy.
While prior winners have tended to feature programs with frequent trading designed to profit from market fluctuations, Moenning presented his flagship risk management strategy – HCR’s Risk Manager Program, which strives to stay in tune with the major cycles in the stock market while limiting turnover. “The program was developed as a risk management overlay for financial advisors who are not active managers. It is a means of allowing them to be fully invested in bull markets, pare back their risk exposure in uncertain markets, and attempt to preserve capital in bear markets,” Moenning explained.
“The Risk Manager is very much a real-world approach that was designed for what financial advisors want from a risk managed strategy. The program also reflects the fact that the stock market tends to rise the vast majority of the time. “In my experience, financial advisors definitely want their clients to ‘make hay while the sun shines’ on the market. But they also don’t want client portfolios 100% at risk when the market action is uncertain or severely negative,” Moenning says.
When asked to succinctly sum up the strategy’s objective, Moenning replied, “The goal is to stay in tune with the risk/reward environment of the market and to get the big moves mostly right, most of the time.”
“We’re not trying to hit home runs here,” Moenning added. “The idea is that by consistently keeping exposure to risk in line with the state of the overall market environment, we can lose less when the bears come to call and come out ahead in the long run.”
By combining two market models that drive the decision – a technical model with six independent signals and a fundamental model that looks at indicators related to the economy and equity environment – The Tactical Risk Manager strives to reduce volatility and provide results superior to the S&P 500 over the long run.
Moenning traces his investment approach to an early fascination with the work of legendary investors Marty Zweig and Ned Davis. Zweig maintained, “The big money is made in the stock market by being on the right side of the major moves,” Zweig wrote. “The idea is to get in harmony with the market. It’s suicidal to fight trends. They have a higher probability of continuing than not…Strong momentum tends to persist…Fighting the tape is an open invitation to disaster.”
“I started managing money for clients on a discretionary basis in mid-1987, which was just in time for the 1987 crash. This was quickly followed by the first Gulf War, and it really hit home with me that losing less during a bear market made the bull markets more enjoyable,” said Moenning. “You weren’t spending time getting back to break even, which creates the opportunity for outperformance.”
