Traders' Roundtable

Intuitively, I'm always more comfortable when my trend system signals a long position in a contract in a backward dated term structure and vice versa in a contangoed term structure. It got me thinking about how I could develop a system to trigger a delta position generated off the slope of the term structure in given contracts. Has anyone done any work on the subject or have any insight?

...perhaps pick the "steepest" contract in a given asset class and be short and pick the "most negative" contract and be long. I'm thinking you put yourself in a 50/50 delta position with "positive" carry. With proper money management, might be worth exploring.

any thoughts on the general concept or on specific ideas to code/test in blox appreciated...

Peng Wang (of Georgetown University) wrote a paper on Quantitative Tactical Asset Allocation. He used contango vs backwardation as a measure of "value" and based the commodity allocation on investing when commodities where I think 1.5x to 2x Standard Deviations below the normal reading. So when backwardation was extreme by historical standards.