The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Index, which provides a representative baseline for how the broad liquid alternative investment category performs, returned 0.34 per cent in April, underperforming the 0.42 per cent monthly return of the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index.
“April was a positive month for alternative strategies,” says Jason Schwarz (pictured), president of Wilshire Funds Management. “Long-biased equity strategies benefited from gains across global equity markets, with notable performance within emerging markets. Event driven and relative value strategies continued to benefit from being long credit risk, particularly within corporate bonds.”
The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Multi-Strategy Index, which includes both single and multi-manager funds, returned 0.58 per cent in April.
The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Global Macro Index ended the month down -0.06 per cent, outperforming the -0.07 per cent return of the HFRX Macro/CTA Index.
CTAs detracted -25 basis points of return while discretionary global macro managers contributed 15 basis points of return and currency/commodity managers contributed 3 basis points of return.
The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Relative Value Index ended the month up 0.33 per cent, outperforming the 0.20 per cent return of the HFRX Relative Value Arbitrage Index.
Credit managers contributed the entirety of the return while multi-strategy managers, convertible arbitrage, and volatility strategies were all slightly positive.
While the Fed increased short-term rates, US yields stayed relatively constant and high yield credit spreads slightly tightened. This led to modest positive performance from managers in the Credit space.
The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Equity Hedge Index ended the month up 0.42 per cent, underperforming the HFRX Equity Hedge Index’s 0.72 per cent return.
Long-biased managers contributed 43 basis points to Index performance while market neutral and short-biased managers each detracted -1 basis point of return.
Long-biased strategies benefited from rising equity markets with positive contributions from Information Technology and Consumer Discretionary investments.
The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Event Driven Index ended the month up 0.65 per cent, underperforming the 0.70 per cent return of the HFRX Event Driven Index.
Credit managers contributed 28 basis points of return while merger arbitrage strategies added 23 basis points, and multi-strategy managers added 14 basis points of return.
The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Index family is a joint offering between Wilshire Funds Management, the global investment management business unit of Wilshire Associates Incorporated, and Wilshire Analytics, creator of the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index.
