Trend following strategies were facing challenging market conditions, at least in the beginning of the month. In the aftermath of the US Presidency elections trend in the bond/treasury markets changed. Also the currency-, commodity- and equity markets were volatile.
The first half of the month it looked like a lot of funds should end the month with severe losses. However, our selection of fund managers showed their capabilities and recovered most of the losses. For sure we were partly helped by the strong development of the USD (quite some fund are Dollar denominated and we only have a partial hedge on the dollar at the moment).
We added a Currency Trading strategy to the portfolio last month. This fund was one of the better performing funds. Also this fund is quite uncorrelated to our other positions. CTA. All in all, trend following was a losing game in November. Unfortunately in Long Short Equity, our second biggest style allocation, was did not give much excitement either.
The December month is started quite promising. Most CTA’s managers are performing strong, the trends they picked up in the last week of November seem to be continuing. Also for Long/Short Equity we see market conditions which seem to be good for these strategies.