Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – After giving back some gains in July, the best performing Nordic trend-following CTAs of the first half of 2022 are back to their winning ways. The broader CTA strategy group in the Nordics, however, edged up only 0.4 percent in August as Finnish funds dragged down the group’s performance. The Nordic CTA strategy category within the Nordic Hedge Index is the only category in the green this year with an advance of 4.3 percent in the first eight months of 2022.
Mandatum Managed Futures Fund, which uses machine learning algorithms that select the right combination of momentum-based models for a given environment, was the group’s best performer in August with a monthly advance of 6.4 percent. Last month’s advance brought the Mandatum managed futures vehicle’s 2022 performance back into positive territory at 0.8 percent.
Lynx, RPM Evolving CTA Fund and SEB Asset Selection, all among this year’s ten best-performing hedge funds in the Nordics, booked gains during August. Lynx Asset Management’s systematic trend-following vehicle, so far the second-best performer within the Nordic hedge fund universe in 2022, advanced 3.0 percent in August to bring the year-to-date performance to 33.5 percent. “Lynx was profitable in August as gains in currencies, fixed income and precious metals outweighed losses in equities, energies and agricultural commodities,” writes Lynx Asset Management in a letter to investors.
SEB’s quant-driven trend-follower, SEB Asset Allocation, gained 4.7 percent in August to extend its 2022 gains to 19.3 percent. The fund managed by SEB’s Quantitative Strategies and Liquid Alternatives team, with Otto Francke and Mikael Nilsson as the lead portfolio managers, is among the ten best-performing hedge funds in the Nordics in 2022. RPM Evolving CTA Fund, another top performer that invests in a select group of young CTA managers in their “Evolving Phase,” gained 23.2 percent in 2022 after edging up 0.4 percent in August.
Pure-commodity trend-following Calculo Evolution Fund booked a monthly gain of 2.2 percent in August to extend its 2022 advance to 11.9 percent. Philip Carlsson’s fund is on track to reach its best annual performance since launching about four years ago. Estlander & Partners’ legacy trend-following strategy Alpha Trend also finished the month of August in the green with an advance of 0.6 percent. Estlander & Partners Alpha Trend Program gained 5.5 percent during the first eight months of 2022. Estlander & Partners’ other two vehicles, Glacies and Freedom, finished the month of August in the red.
Volt Diversified Alpha Fund, which relies on a fundamental-focused systematic trading program to capture price moves motivated by changes in underlying economic factors, edged down 0.8 percent in August to end the first eight months of 2022 up 7.5 percent. Wavebreaker Fund, a newly-launched fund employing a quantitative trend-following strategy combined with a systematic asset allocation strategy complemented by discretionary macro overlays, is enjoying a solid first year after gaining 5.1 percent year-to-date.
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