Barclays Trailblazer Index

[Souschef]

DW has an annuity, and she just got a hustle to move some of the funds into this Trailblazers index.
I went on line to the Barclay website, and below is their description:
Barclays is a global leader in Quantitative Investment Strategies. The Barclays Indices are a diverse family of systematic non-discretionary trading strategy indices available across multiple asset classes including equities, fixed income, FX, commodities, derivatives and alternative investments.
This pegs my BS meter. I would appreciate any comments.

 

[OldShooter]

The only possible reason for this pitch is to make more money for them, money that can only come from your DW.

 

[braumeister]

Seems popular with annuity managers. A good reason to run away.

But their own information shows that it would have trailed the S&P 500 for most of the last ten years.

 

[38Chevy454]

Barclays is a global leader in Quantitative Investment Strategies. The Barclays Indices are a diverse family of systematic non-discretionary trading strategy indices available across multiple asset classes including equities, fixed income, FX, commodities, derivatives and alternative investments.
This pegs my BS meter. I would appreciate any comments.

That statement is a bunch of fancy words to impress someone without any or very limited financial knowledge. It tells nothing specific, gives no information as to what the actual investments are, or even a strategy for the investing. I completely agree with your assessment, it is 100% BS.

 

[OldShooter]

Rule of Thumb: The more complicated an investment product is, the more likely it is that it was designed to make money for the seller, not to make money for you.

 

[jazz4cash]

Seems popular with annuity managers. A good reason to run away.

But their own information shows that it would have trailed the S&P 500 for most of the last ten years.

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Yeah but since it is a proprietary index they can tweek it anytime they wish and presto change-o it beats the S&P.

 

[RunningBum]

Yeah but since it is a proprietary index they can tweek it anytime they wish and presto change-o it beats the S&P.

Only if they tweak it correctly, which they haven't been really doing 8 of the last 10 years. A tweak now doesn't change historical returns.