CTA strategies continues to do well, putting up strong numbers in Q1 2024. Our index looks to be up 4.6% for Q1and the index is now at new highs. That does however not make it easier to raise capital or to operate a CTA. We monitor the number of managers and entities that are registered with the NFA. A snapshot of the current statistics can be found here. Our time series can be found on our dedicated page.
The interested reader may note that we classify some managers as a CTA, despite them not being registered as a CTA. Our classification is functional, if a manager largely trades Futures or other Macro market, we tend to include them in our CTA classification. Any investor is requested to do their own due diligence and very the status of any potential manager that they are seeking to do business with. A good start is the ‘BASIC‘ service offered by the NFA.
The number of CTAs and CPOs may have stopped to decline, perhaps a reflection of the strong recovery by the average manager and perhaps a slightly improved asset raising climate.
To increase confusion, there are managers that are registered in multiple classes, e.g. both as a CTA and a CPO, depending on how you seek to do business. The number of managers continues to decline by close to 3% per annum.
The largest decline we observed was for the number of associates, a 5% decline in a single month. We are uncertain why this took place now. It could be a general cleanup of the number of firms, or a change in the overall framework.
We observed several new names of the last few years: Bitnomial, Clear Street, Coinbase, MFI, RobinHood, and WeBull to name a few. This partly reflect the Crypto Futures where several of the new FCM have a strong connection to Crypto Markets. More detailed FCM data can be found on the CFTC website.
Last week NilssonHedge went skiing. We do apologize if we have not gotten back to you yet. The database are updated and available for download.