2008 was a bumper year for CTAs and with investments across 18 managers the ACL Alternative Fund excelled. CTAs also score in the liquidity and transparency stakes, leading issues for investors today
By Claire Makin
When Abbey Capital's ACL Alternative Fund racked up a return of 41.8% in 2008, chief executive officer Tony Gannon and his team did not break out the champagne. Instead, they analysed the numbers to see if their managers had inadvertently taken excessive risk to achieve returns they saw as abnormally high.
Tony Gannon and Mick Swift
The answer was no. Their risk allocations had not changed. It was just that, for first time in Gannon's 21-year experience in managed futures, every strategy and sector - from forex to long-term trend followers - had a terrific year, with most commodity trading advisers posting double-digit returns. "It's something we expect to happen once every 20...