The IStar Systematic Fund, backed by seeding specialist IMQubator, reconfigured its trading strategy in April 2012 and turned a negative performance into a positive return for the year, ending up at +3.24 per cent at the end of December 2012.
The fund is now up 3.63 per cent for 2013 (to end February), versus a YTD average of 0.77 per cent for managed future funds as a whole, according to the Barclay CTA Index compiled by BarclayHedge. In the last 12 months, IStar Systematic has returned 8.58 per cent with a Sharpe ratio of 1.1.
The IStar Systematic Fund is a Luxembourg-registered SICAV SIF, providing CTA/managed futures style hedge fund strategies across 50 markets, relying on behavioural economics research and the extensive experience of the principals. The company behind it, Amsterdam-based Istar Capital BV, was set up by AIG veterans Rudolph Shally and Thomas Artarit, who have nearly 45 years combined experience in the financial industry.
The IStar fund employs several multi sub-strategies and discretionary risk management rules applied on systematic signals, so it is a “hybrid product between divergence and convergence” that seeks to generate alpha in all market conditions.
In May 2011, IStar Capital signed a seed investment deal with IMQubator, the hedge fund seeding platform backed by APG, the asset manager for Dutch pensions giant Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP.
Thomas Artarit, IStar’s co-chief executive and founding partner, says: “In an environment where the safest bonds are yielding so little, CTAs have a receptive audience. Pension funds and institutions desperate to diversify out of fixed income but uncomfortable with the volatility suffered by equities are the natural market. The value of CTAs is in long-term, statistical out-performance: they truly pay off in the long haul.”
