Specialist commodity hedge fund manager Global Advisors has announced that funds will be returned to investors in the Global Advisors Commodity Investment and Global Commodity Index Plus p
Specialist commodity hedge fund manager Global Advisors has announced that funds will be returned to investors in the Global Advisors Commodity Investment and Global Commodity Index Plus programmes as of September 30.
‘We are returning funds to investors in two of our fund products,’ says Daniel Masters, who co-founded Global Advisors with Russell Newton in 1999. ‘Poor performance and external investor redemptions are the reasons for our decision.
‘Our trading and research teams remain in place and our management company, Global Advisors, will now focus on existing and new managed accounts and our quantitative fund, Global Commodity Systematic. We are also exploring new strategic alliances.
‘We are discussing a deeper partnership with IPM Informed Portfolio Management, including a possible merger in the longer term. In June this year IPM and GA jointly launched the IPM Commodity Program, which is based on a combination of the systematic models used within the Global Commodity Systematic programme and IPM’s own models, and which is currently offered as a managed account product.’
Newton says: ‘Commodities are now being recognised as a mainstream asset class. We have developed quantitative, systematic expertise to trading that we use alongside our discretionary approaches.
‘Over the past year or so, these systematic models have performed extremely well, and we continue to believe they offer a great opportunity for investors who are looking to widen their approach to commodities.’
The Global Advisors Commodity Investment programme has an eight-year track record and has returned an estimated 6.13 per cent per year on average, with average volatility of 15.90 per cent, but is down an estimated 12.93 per cent this year.
The Global Commodity Index Plus programme has a one-year track record and has underperformed its benchmark, the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (now the S&P GSCI) by an estimated 3.04 per cent since its launch, with average volatility of 9.02 per cent.
The Global Commodity Systematic programme has a two-year track record and has returned an estimated average of 15.28 per cent per year, with average volatility of 10.68 per cent, although it is down an estimated 0.63 per cent in 2007.
A specialist commodities hedge fund manager, Global Advisors has offices in London and New York and provides investment management services to hedge funds, fund of funds, commodities firms and individual and institutional investors. Before founding the firm, Masters and Newton honed their skills at Royal Dutch/Shell, developed innovative strategies for the commodities trading firm Phibro, and built a profitable trading business at JPMorgan.