Fascinating report of Futures programs - It's amazing to me how poorly they have done overall as a industry. The are some good looking equity curves in there. This report can be seen online here I highly recommend this tracking site if you have any interest in managed futures. Yo can see individual performance and read about methodologies etc. Managed Futures, Commodity Trading Advisors | IASG Flash Report April Flash Report Paradigm or Paradox? When Tariffs Replace Free Trade Trump’s big-tent tariff plan revives Hamilton, challenges Friedman & Hayek, and turns Keynes on his head. What it means for dollar liquidity, re-shoring plays & your portfolio Anatomy of a Tough Month for Trend-Followers: Tariff Shocks & Volatility Spikes April’s “Liberation Day” tariffs jolted global markets—hard. Market Snapshot Tariff headlines and a whipsawing rates curve jolted markets out of their Q1 lull. Intraday ranges widened, option-implied vol popped, and cross-asset correlations flipped direction twice in the month. Trend followers were whipsawed, short-term macro desks and ag specialists cherry-picked a few bright spots, and option sellers took the harshest slap. Below are the leaders, laggards, and the macro shifts we’re watching as we roll into June. By the numbers 313 active CTA programs on our radar; 232 (≈ 74 %) have filed April returns so far. Scoreboard tilted red: 105 managers positive vs. 124 negative. Average winner +3.24 % ⟷ average loser -5.53 % → composite drifted -1.49 %. Performance spread: best program +27.35 %, worst -40.67 %. Late reporters (81 programs, 26 %) could still nudge the composite, but the story—heavy dispersion, more downside velocity than upside pop, won’t change. Key Numbers April YTD IASG CTA Index -1.83 -1.73 Agricultural Trader Index 0.61 -0.61 S&P 500 -0.76 -5.31 PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT NECESSARILY INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS. Performance Stats Coverage is solid but not complete. We track 313 active CTA programs; 232 (≈ 74 %) have already filed April returns. The picture below reflects three-quarters of the universe—good enough for directionality, but keep an eye on late reporters for final drift. More red than green. April tilted negative: 105 managers posted gains while 124 finished down. That 46 / 54 split shows how tricky the month felt on the desk. Winners chipped up, losers bled. The average gainer earned +3.24 %—a respectable pop but hardly a moonshot. By contrast, the average loser gave back -5.53 %, nearly double the magnitude in the opposite direction. Translation: downside pain was steeper than upside joy. Headline number masks the extremes. The overall portfolio print came in at -1.49 %, but dispersion was huge: the best program banked +27.35 %, while the worst cratered -40.67 %. That 68-percentage-point spread screams “selection alpha required.” Index Performance Highlights Ags were the lone bright spot. The Agricultural Trader Index eked out +0.61 % in April— the only major bucket in the green—leaving YTD down just -0.61 %. Soft-commodity range-trading helped ag specialists sidestep the whipsaws that caught broader trend books. Equity-linked strategies slipped but held their lead. The Stock Index Trader Index shed -1.17 % (YTD also -1.17 %), yet its 15.96 % five-year gain keeps it second only to option writers over longer horizons. Thirty-six programs here—mostly intraday or short-gamma models—still see plenty of index dispersion to trade. Discretionary macro desks tread water Discretionary Trader Index: -1.46 % in April, but still +0.12 % YTD and a sturdy 47.5 % five-year total. Human macro teams gave back some March gains as tariff headlines and rate jitters produced stop-and-reverse noise they couldn’t fade quickly enough. The composite turned down. The broad IASG CTA Composite fell -1.83 % (now -1.73 % YTD). With 234 programs reporting, that aggregate masks a huge dispersion: ags mildly up, but trend followers and option writers deep in the red. Systematic & diversified models struggled. Systematic Trader Index: -2.01 % (-2.38 % YTD). Diversified Trader Index: -2.36 % (-2.47 % YTD). Factor-rotation and basket trend books couldn’t escape the tariff-driven cross-asset chop. Trend followers took the biggest hit—again. Trend Following Strategy Index: -4.59 % in April, pushing YTD to -7.05 % and 12-month to -14.3 %. Linear trends reversed in energies and rates, and with only 60 programs here, the pain was concentrated. Option writers were the month’s downside tail. Option Strategy Index: -5.54 % (YTD -2.66 %). A short-vol bias met sudden spikes in realized volatility, wiping out much of Q1’s cushion. Still, the group boasts the table-topping 50.7 % five-year return, showing how lucrative premium selling has been over the cycle—if you survive the occasional squeeze. Quick Take: April saw a broad pullback—only agriculture stayed positive—while option sellers and trend followers absorbed the brunt of the tariff-induced volatility. Over multi-year windows, discretionary macro and option strategies still dominate, but 2025’s first third reminds allocators how quickly regime shifts can punish crowded styles. New Listings Worth Watching Veerpoint Capital - ContraCOT - COT-driven contrarian futures; +11.4 % in April and +22.4 % YTD on a still-boutique $80K AUM (launched Oct 2022; max DD -31.2 %) Blue Edge Advisors - Merlion Fund Series - Systematic global-macro futures; +3.1 % in April, +3.2 % YTD, scaling to $12.9 M AUM since launch in Apr 2020 (max DD -9.9 %). Crescent Bay Capital Management - Cipher - Quant futures & options; -0.1 % in April but +3.0 % YTD, now at $919K AUM after its Mar 2025 debut. PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT NECESSARILY INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS. Need a deeper dive? Have a question about a specific manager? Contact us and we’ll break down the numbers. Highlighted Program Performance Managers with assets greater than $10M CTA Program Apr 12M 36M CAROR Vol Statar Capital Natural Gas Strategy 4.25 32.57 46.29 31.85 23.56 SinoPac Asset Management Multi-Strategy Quant Fund 10.33 14.09 32.23 8.28 11.60 Le Mans Trading LLC Hyperion Fund 1.96 11.51 33.50 8.54 2.06 Buckingham Global Advisors Strategic Emini 0.72 11.25 59.93 9.32 7.64 R. G. Niederhoffer Capital Macro Diversified Program 11.30 2.48 26.86 6.99 19.94 Insch Kintore Ltd Cross Border Kintore -1.09 11.48 71.22 9.65 26.42 Mandatum Asset Management Life Managed Futures 3.78 12.94 25.00 5.10 12.01 Prolific Capital Markets Swiss System 2.93 10.64 39.09 8.37 10.03 View or create your Watchlist Why these eight? Breadth: All show up in multiple time buckets, signalling adaptability rather than one-off luck. Style mix: You get energy specialists (Statar), equities (Buckingham), multi-asset macro (AG Capital, SinoPac, Niederhoffer, Insch, Mandatum), and systematic diversification (Prolific). Size spread: AUM ranges from under $100 M (Prolific) to multi-billion (Statar), giving allocators options across capacity needs. PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT NECESSARILY INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS. * Stats as of 5/19/25 2 PM CST - Illustration created using AI tools (ChatGPT & DALL·E, OpenAI). IASG, Inc. | 141 W Jackson Blvd. Suite 1940 | Chicago, IL 60604 Tel: (312) 561-3145 or | Unsubscribe © 2025 Institutional Advisory Services Group, Inc. All rights reserved. PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT NECESSARILY INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS. THE RISK OF LOSS IN TRADING COMMODITY FUTURES, OPTIONS, AND FOREIGN EXCHANGE ("FOREX") IS SUBSTANTIAL.