Solutions
Following a 1.50% drop in October, managed futures gained 0.11% in November according to the Barclay CTA Index compiled by BarclayHedge. Year-to-date, the Index remains down 3.09%.
“In spite of a gut-wrenching reversal from risk-off to risk-on in the last three days of the month, CTAs were mostly in the black at month-end,” says Sol Waksman (pictured), founder and president of BarclayHedge.
Six of Barclay’s eight CTA indices were profitable in November. The Currency Traders Index gained 1.09%, Discretionary Traders were up 0.28%, Financial & Metal Traders gained 0.23%, and Systematic Traders added 0.09%.
“For much of November the US
Systematic Alpha Management (SAM), a New York based CTA, will launch the Systematic Alpha Multi-Strategy Futures Fund (SAMSFF) in January 2012, a new fund that aims to achieve consistent positive returns with low volatility and low correlation to all other asset classes, including CTAs or managed futures strategies.
SAMSFF will exploit two main themes: mean-reversion and directional trading.
The short-term mean-reversion market neutral component of the fund is implemented using proprietary spreads composed from the most liquid global equity index, currency and commodity futures markets. This component will be traded via two approaches – the original approach, which has been
NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Börse AG have submitted revised remedies to the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition (DG Competition).
The revisions are designed to reflect the European Commission’s feedback on the initial proposal, and thereby fully address the Commission’s remaining concerns while preserving the industrial and economic logic of the merger.
In summary, the parties have strengthened their original proposal with respect to European single equity derivatives by increasing the assets to be included in the divestiture, and to provide the purchaser of that business with an option to access Eurex Clearing for single equity derivatives products. The parties
The European Commission’s objectives for MiFID II/MiFIR were released in October this year. At the heart of this new regulation is an attempt to bring greater transparency to the OTC markets, with proposed requirements for pre-trade pricing to be shown on a continuous basis and extended reporting of executed trade prices. This is intended to bring a transparent, level playing field to EU financial markets.
Separately, the EMIR (European Market Infrastructure Regulation) legislation is aimed at implementing the 2009 G20 commitment that: “all standardized OTC derivative contracts should be traded on exchanges or electronic trading platforms, where appropriate, and cleared
The London Metal Exchange (LME) will introduce financially settled swaps for all non-ferrous contracts on 23 January 2012. The average-price contracts are the first of their type to be traded on-exchange in the world and are designed specifically for participants of the physical industry who need to hedge the monthly average price.
“LME swaps will bring transparency to pre- and post-trade prices,” says Chris Evans, Head of Business Development at the LME. “For the first time swaps users will benefit from a regulated market with the same counter-party default risk protection offered by regular futures contracts”.
Tradable on LMEselect
The London Stock Exchange Group has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the 50 per cent stake in FTSE International Limited, from Pearson, that it does not already own. Following the transaction which is expected to close in Q1 2012 subject to customary closing conditions, FTSE International Limited will be wholly owned by the London Stock Exchange Group.
FTSE currently calculates and manages over 200,000 indices worldwide which are linked to over USD3 trillion in global Assets under Management. These include the widely used global benchmark, the FTSE All-World Index, as well as a range of flagship indices around the world, such
Hedge funds posted monthly declines in November for the fifth time in the last seven months, as lack of clarity on resolution of the European sovereign debt crisis resulted in continued investor caution and risk aversion. The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index declined by 0.92 per cent, with weakness across all sub-strategies more concentrated in equity and credit sensitive strategies, as reported today by HFR (Hedge Fund Research, Inc.) the leading provider of data, indices and analysis of the global hedge fund industry.
Relative Value funds posted a decline for the month, as US interest rates declined while borrowing
PerTrac has launched a new service that offers hedge fund administrators the ability to deliver performance tear sheets to their hedge fund clients, including how well the funds performed relative to benchmarks. Hedge fund managers can offer these alternative tear sheets to investors as independent, third-party verification of their hedge fund performance.
The new solution, called PerTrac Reporting-as–a-Service (RaaS), debuts at a time when institutional investors are demanding more transparency and independent verification of performance results from hedge funds.
"Transparency, governance and independence in the assessment and reporting of all performance related measurements and processes continue to be the main
BNY Mellon has launched MarginEdge, a global derivatives margin management service that allows financial institutions, clearing members and central counterparties (CCPs) to manage margin collateral efficiently while balancing trading costs and capital requirements associated with listed, cleared over-the-counter (OTC) and bilateral OTC derivatives.
Through MarginEdge, market participants use BNY Mellon’s technology and expertise to reduce risk and increase efficiency in the complex derivatives collateral management process. In particular, MarginEdge helps segregate assets, supports transformation services, optimises the use and allocation of collateral, consolidates margin management across collateral locations and providers, and simplifies connectivity among market participants for margin movements.
Advent Software, Inc has launched Tradex 4.0, the newest version of Advent’s industry leading solution for fund order management and distribution, in EMEA markets.
Tradex is a web-based system that is easy to use, and allows firms that distribute funds to replace labor-intensive manual procedures for fund share order processing with a highly automated work flow, all the way from order entry to settlement. Tradex helps these firms increase operational efficiencies and provide superior client service for fund order management and distribution, and can be tailored for any client in any market.
“The order processing of mutual funds and other
