How to Add Trend Following Alpha Without Sacrificing Your Core Portfolio with Rodrigo Gordillo

July 15, 2025

2 minute read

Listen on The Move

🎯 What if you could protect your portfolio during market crashes, boost returns, and still keep your core investments intact? That’s not a fantasy—it’s the power of trend following / managed futures via return stacking, and it's finally accessible to everyday investors.

🎙️ In this episode of Raise Your Average, Pierre Daillie sits down with Rodrigo Gordillo, President of ReSolve Asset Management, co-creators of the Return Stacked ETFs suite, for a deep dive into one of investing’s best-kept secrets: managed futures. Long embraced by institutions for their ability to deliver uncorrelated, crisis-resistant returns, managed futures are finally breaking into mainstream portfolios—thanks to innovations in return stacking.

Rodrigo breaks it all down: why trend following works, how behavioral biases create opportunities, and how stacking strategies like RSST and RSBT let you keep your equities and bonds while adding diversifiers like managed futures on top. It’s a smarter way to use leverage, designed not to chase returns, but to smooth them out—even in the roughest markets. Whether you're trying to improve performance, reduce downside, or ease your clients’ diversification anxiety, this episode gives you the tools to rethink how portfolios are built in the modern era.

✅ Key Takeaways:

Trend following works because human behavior is predictable—anchoring, herding, and slow adjustments to new info create patterns to exploit.
Managed futures offer rare benefits: real diversification, low correlation to stocks and bonds, and strong upside when markets tumble.
Return stacking lets you “stack” strategies like managed futures on top of your core holdings, without having to sell your stocks or bonds.
ETFs like RSST and RSBT make return stacking simple and accessible—bringing institutional tools to retail investors.
You can use them to amplify returns or solve behavioral roadblocks—like line-item regret or clients abandoning good strategies at the wrong time.
Leverage becomes your friend when applied to uncorrelated assets. Used correctly, it reduces drawdowns and improves compounding.

⏱️ Chapters:

00:00 – Welcome & What This Episode Is About
01:00 – What Are Trend Following and Managed Futures?
03:00 – Why Trend Works: Human Psychology & Risk Dynamics
04:30 – Managed Futures = Real Diversification
06:00 – Crisis Alpha in Action: 2008 and 2022
08:00 – Why Retail Investors Missed Out (Until Now)
10:00 – How Institutions Use Return Stacking
12:00 – How RSST and RSBT Work (Mechanics Explained)
15:00 – Portfolio Use Cases & Applications
17:00 – Why Return Stacking Beats Stock Picking
20:00 – What Is “Defensive Leverage”?
24:00 – Better Compounding Math with Low Correlation
25:00 – Solving for Behavior: Make Diversification Easy to Hold
27:00 – Hiding the Line Item: Reduce Regret Risk
28:00 – What This Means for the Future of Portfolio Construction

🏷️ #ReturnStacking #ManagedFutures #PortfolioDiversification #InvestSmarter #ETFStrategies