Commodity trading advisors were rocked in April by President Trump’s tariff policies. Most of the high-profile funds — also called managed futures — posted large losses for yet another month and are down sharply for the year.
Perhaps no fund was hurt worse than the Mulvaney Global Markets Fund. The trend follower, known for wild monthly swings, dropped 40.67 percent in April alone and is down 39.22 percent year-to-date, according to a CTA database. It had started off the year by gaining 12.45 percent in January — so its performance has swung nearly 52 percentage points in three months. It is unknown exactly what caused the stunning loss. Mulvaney declined to comment.
The Tulip Trend Fund, for its part, declined by 8.1 percent last month and was off by 28.5 percent through April, the firm says.
“April proved to be another challenging month for the strategy,” states Tulip’s monthly client report, seen by Institutional Investor. “The global market turmoil following ‘Liberation Day’ resulted in three days of extreme losses. Although nearly half of these losses were recovered, significant losses remained in currency and commodity markets and to a lesser extent in stock markets.”
Foreign exchange cost the fund more than eight percentage points in April and about 12.5 percentage points for the year. Interest rate trades were the biggest winner last month.
Elsewhere, the Quantedge Global Fund fell about 10 percent in April and is now down 5.12 percent for the year, per a hedge fund database. The Aspect Diversified Fund dropped 9.6 percent last month and has slumped 13.5 percent for the year.
The DUNN World Monetary & Agriculture Program (WMA) declined by 3.18 percent in April and was down 8.83 percent for the year. WMA Institutional — the half-leverage version of the WMA strategy — fell 1.53 percent in April and 4.18 percent for the year, according to an email communication with investors, seen by II.
According to the monthly summary report, viewed by II, in April the funds suffered “moderate losses” in stocks, currencies, and metals, which “outweighed moderate to small gains” made in energy, fixed income, agriculturals, and volatility.
Dunn said that heading into May, its most significant exposure was net long fixed income. “Half that of fixed income, moderately sized positions are held in agriculturals and metals, where agriculturals remain directionally mixed with a short bias and metals are now net short for the first time in the past 12 months.”
Dunn said it had “materially” pared back net exposure in energy and stocks but remained net short and net long, respectively. In addition, currencies against the U.S. dollar “flipped” to a net long exposure, with long British pound the only substantial position of the sector.
Discus Composite was down 4.5 percent in April, putting it in the red by 31 basis points, according to the CTA database.
There is one notable standout this year: QMS Diversified Global Macro Strategy rose 5.38 percent in April and is now up 20.2 percent for the year, per the database. It is a quantitative, systematic, long-short investment program. It trades in highly liquid global futures and forwards, including equity indices, sovereign rates and bonds, commodities, and currencies.
