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In a major test for the "big three" who started hedge funds this year - Dan Sundheim, Steve Cohen and Michael Gelband - none of them reportedly made money in October. Daniel Sundheim's D1 Capital Partners lost money last month and is down about 5% on the year. One of Pelham Capital's hedge funds plunged last month, joining a host of other firms that struggled to perform in October; Tiger Global Management posted a 9.4% net loss in its tech-focused hedge fund last month. On the ohter side, Crispin Odey, fighting to recover from three successive years of losses in his main hedge fund, made money last month as his long-running bearish bets paid off.

Still, there may be a small silver lining for investors if they have focused on manager selection. A deeper dive into October performance shows a significant dispersion of returns across almost all strategies.

HTL Capital's Alpha Now Long/Short Equity fund which is composed of several strategies that trade alternative data was up +0.43% in October and is up +1.90% year to date.

Short-term trend followers were also positioned well in October. In an interview, Marc Malek, Managing Partner at Conquest Capital Group told Opalesque that "diversifying across timeframes has helped us to be up compared to others in our category." Conquest's Star program, which is an all-weather momentum based CTA strategy, was positive in October and benefitted from capturing trends that lasted anywhere from 5-42 days.

Short positions in crude oil helped the St.Gallen I Counter-trend strategy put up positive returns in October. The fund is up +1.61% through October 31 and +8.46% YTD. The fund trades against market trends on a systematic and short-term basis. Another short-term trading program - Amplitude Capital's Vivace Trading Strategy was up +6.44% bringing year to date returns to a whopping +34.81%.

As as a group, the hedge-fund industry is on track to post its worst performance......................

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