Drury Capital has reported April gains of 8.13 per cent for the Drury Diversified Trend-Following Program.
This strong performance comes at a time when many commodities hedge funds are struggling to make gains.
Drury’s commodity portion of the programme gained a healthy 4.81 per cent on the month. This was partly due to the success of its metals sector which forms 16 per cent of the programme mix and produced a robust 7.93 – in part due to managers exiting the gold short positions to lock in profits. Copper also stands to be Drury’s best performer in base metals, due to short positions on the LME and CMX exchanges.
Bill Miller (pictured), head of global sales for Drury, says: “We are cautiously optimistic that the tide is turning. CTA’s can be long or short and we are agile enough to make the most of market activity, making sure we are on the ball to catch market trends and this has given us the edge in April.
“Many investors have money tied up in equities, which have performed well, but historically we know the economic cycle will turn in time. It could be argued that the markets have recently shown signs of retuning to a more normal state, and it appears in certain cases, commodity prices are perhaps less influenced by risk-on/risk-off buying and selling, and perhaps have given way to price moves based on primarily market fundamentals. We know the markets can fluctuate dramatically but we are seeing signs that there is a turnaround beginning to appear.”
The fund’s year-to-date result is +14.39 per cent and since its inception in 1997, the annualised rate of return has been 11.75 per cent, delivering a total return of 491.89 per cent.
Miller says: “I believe our strong diversification within the futures markets, as well as our longer style of trading, will provide performance that will set us apart from the rest of the market and deliver tangible results for our investors.”
