Monsoon Capital, a US-based hedge fund advisor established in 2004, has launched a new pan-Asia equity futures
Monsoon Capital, a US-based hedge fund advisor established in 2004, has launched a new pan-Asia equity futures CTA strategy entitled the Monsoon Asia-Pacific Systematic Program, reported FINalternatives this week. The firm, which specializes in emerging markets – in particular Asia and the Indian sub-continent – also plans to launch a UCITS IV-compliant version of the strategy in September this year. Gautam Prakash (pictured), Monsoon’s founder and CEO, has apparently been running the CTA strategy in a proprietary trading account for the past eight months. Although he admits this isn’t necessarily long enough to draw any big conclusions, Prakash said that it was enough to “feel confident launching the fund”. By focusing on the region’s most liquid equity futures markets in Taiwan, China, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, India, Australia and Singapore, using a variety of trading strategies including pattern recognition and trend-following, the strategy has returned 17.97 per cent according to BarclayHedge data. Prakash said that MAPSP was borne out of the firm’s preparations to launch the systematic India Opportunity Fund, adding: “We discovered that some systems worked quite well across Asia.”
