Alternative Market Briefing

More vehicles and more locations for managed futures funds

Thursday, November 08, 2012

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Grant Jaffarian Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva:

There have been quite a few changes in the types of vehicles and structures that allow investors to have access to managed futures funds and CTAs, according to participants at the recent Opalesque Managed Futures Roundtable . U.S. mutual funds, European UCITS-compliant funds, and managed accounts structures are currently favoured although old products may make a comeback. Furthermore, the distribution of managed futures funds is growing beyond the New York and London locations.

"In the U.S., the mutual fund environment has really exploded there are several multimanager products that have passive trend-following index products," said Grant Jaffarian, Efficient Capitals CIO. Efficient, which is located near Chicago, builds multi-manager portfolios in the managed futures space.

"Our own product is included in a mutual fund offering. The mutual fund market offers significant opportunity, we are starting to see some actively managed ETFs there is maybe one currently active ETF in the U.S."

UCITS managed futures funds are becoming more popular among European investors, he added. He has also seen a lot of institutional investors moving from a fund structure to a managed account structure, for better transparency.

There is an increasing number of ways to access managed futures, but there is also a contraction......................

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