Well that was ugly…. 2018 is in the books, and looking at the asset class scoreboard for the full year is like looking at who won in a race to zero. What was down? Take your pick! Stocks, yep. World Stocks (worse). Commodities (worse yet). Real Estate (down). The diversifiers Hedge Funds and Managed Futures? Minus, loser. Even Bonds were down (slightly). Good old cash was the only place to be if you wanted a positive return. We’ve long talked about correlations going to one in a crisis, and it came home to roost in the fourth quarter of the year – although Managed Futures started to show its worth (better late than never) in December posting a number in the black.
Q3 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
Here’s to a little more diversity in the return stream amongst asset classes in 2019. Happy New Year!
Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.
Source: All ETF performance data from Morningstar.com
Sources: Managed Futures = SocGen CTA Index,
Cash = US T-Bill 13 week coupon equivalent annual rate, with YTD the average of each month’s value,
Bonds = Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF (NYSEARCA:BND),
Hedge Funds = IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy Tracker ETF (NYSEARCA:QAI)
Commodities = iShares S&P GSCI Commodity-Indexed Trust ETF (NYSEARCA:GSG);
Real Estate = iShares U.S. Real Estate ETF (NYSEARCA:IYR);
World Stocks = iShares MSCI ACWI ex-U.S. ETF (NASDAQ:ACWX);
US Stocks = SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:SPY)
Article by RCM Alternatives
