Kettera Strategies Heat Map - December 2019
The generally positive returns for discretionary global macro programs over the last few months continued, and then some, with discretionary managers leading the macro/managed futures sector in December; Quant macro programs generally performed positively, but not as well as discretionary. Setbacks for the quants stemmed once again primarily from the G10 currencies, although fixed income – unlike last month – was a big contributor to the underperformance.
In contrast to November, the short-term and higher-frequency programs we follow seemed to generally struggle during the month. No huge drawdowns, but moderately negative returns across the board.
The options- and volatility-based programs appeared to continue a profitable run, although not as stellar as last month’s (we note, again, that the strategies Kettera follows in this bucket are almost entirely either volatility spreads or “long vol” programs).
Trend following strategies were down on the month, with currencies driving losses. The USD declined versus most other G10 currencies, notably the GBP and the Euro, reversing a trend. [generally, because of Phase I and Conservatives winning a decisive victory in the U.K., there was large shift from Risk-Off to Risk-On. Bonds sold off, EM currencies and the BP-Euro rallied vs. USD, equities rallied, gold rallied, and Crude rallied after OPEC agreed to cut production].
In the equities L/S world, long market exposure and general pro-growth biases of most strategies in this space proved to be beneficial in December. Short positions in interest rate sensitive sectors (e.g. financials) tended to hurt performance.
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Footnotes:
For the “style classes” and “baskets” presented in this letter: The “style baskets” referenced above were created by Kettera for research purposes to track the category and are classifications drawn by Kettera Strategies in their review of programs on and for the Hydra Platform. The arrows represent the style basket’s overall performance for the month (e.g. the sideways arrow indicates that the basket was largely flat overall, a solid red down arrow indicates the basket (on average) was largely negative compared to most months, etc.). The “style basket” for a class is created from monthly returns (net of fees) of programs that are either: programs currently or formerly on Hydra; or under review with an expectation of being added to Hydra. The weighting of a program in a basket depends upon into which of these three groups the program falls. Style baskets are not investible products or index products being offered to investors. They are meant purely for analysis and comparison purposes. These also were not created to stimulate interest in any underlying or associated program. Nonetheless, as these research tools may be regarded to be “hypothetical” combinations of managers, hypothetical performance results have many inherent limitations, some of which are described below. No representation is being made that any product or account will achieve profits or losses similar to those shown. In fact, there are frequently sharp differences between hypothetical performance results and the actual results subsequently achieved by any particular trading program. One of the limitations of hypothetical results is that they are generally prepared with the benefit of hindsight. In addition, hypothetical trading does not involve financial risk, and no hypothetical trading record can completely account for the impact of financial risk in actual trading. There are numerous other factors related to the markets in general or to the implementation of any specific trading program which cannot be fully accounted for in the preparation of hypothetical performance results and all of which can adversely affect actual trading results.
Benchmark sources:
1-The Hedge Fund Intelligence Global Macro Index and HFI Currency Index
2-The Societe Generale Trend Index and SG CTA Index
3-The Societe General Short-term Traders Index: (same link as above)
4-The Eurekahedge AI Hedge Fund Index
5-The BarclayHedge Currency Traders Index and BTOP FX Traders Index
6- S&P GSCI Metals & Energy Index and S&P GSCI Ag Commodities Index
7-The CBOE Eurekahedge Relative Value Volatility Hedge Fund Index
8-The Eurekahedge-Mizuho Multi-Strategy Index: (See above)
9-The Eurekahedge Long Short Equities Hedge Fund Index: (See above)
10-Blend of BarclayHedge Equity Market Neutral Index with Eurekahedge Equity Mkt Neutral Index (see link above)
Indices and other financial benchmarks shown are provided for illustrative purposes only, are unmanaged, reflect reinvestment of income and dividends and do not reflect the impact of advisory fees. Index data is reported as of date of publication and may be a month-to-date estimate if all underlying components have not yet reported. The index providers may update their reported performance from time to time. Kettera disclaims any obligation to verify these numbers or to update or revise the performance numbers.
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