Van Global Hedge Fund Index Pushed Up By Futures Fund Gains In October

by Carla Johnson, Investors Offshore.com

16 November 2004

The Van Global Hedge Fund Index posted a 0.6% return for the month of October, taking year to date gains to 3.3% as futures trading strategies continued to shine last month.

Relative to the broader equity markets indices, hedge funds continued to disappoint last month, Van reported. Less than one-quarter of the hedge funds in the index beat the 1.5% gain on the S&P 500, whilst European stocks, as measured by the Dow Jones Eurostoxx 50 gained by 3.6% in October.

Neverthless, all four of the broad strategy groups measured by Van ended last month in positive territory, with the Directional Trading Group performing best, buoyed by strong gains from futures funds, and posting an average 2.2% rise.

Meanwhile the remaining broader strategy groups, Speciality, Market Neutral and Long/Short Equity, gained 0.9%, 0.8% and 0.4% respectively.

Among the individual trading strategies Futures funds, typically managed by Commodity Pool Operators using quantitive trading systems, produced the strongest return in October, gaining 3.1% net as eleven of the fourteen individual strategies ended the month higher.

The worst performers of these individual strategies were Opportunistic (down 1%), Market Neutral Securities, (down 0.6%), and Hedging and Short Selling (down 0.3%).

Year to date, the best performing strategies are Distressed Securities, up 11.8%, Income (up 6.6%) and Emerging Markets (up 6.4%).

The Van Global Hedge Fund Index, based on the performance of 6,000 US and offshore-based funds, first began in January 1988 at a value of 1,000 and last month increased to a value of 11,882.30.

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