As part of a regular exercise, we scan the NFA register for new and closed manager. The below report will be developed over time and will be a recurring feature. We would like to highlight that some of the closures and registrations are due to corporate (re)structuring. Amongst the managers that closed, we note two (former) prominent French funds: Rivoli and Quantam that withdrew their licenses in February.

While the trend may be your friend in markets, it does not seem to be your friend in CTA startups. Since we started to track these numbers, the annual rate of CTAs closing is in the order of 13-15% p.a. On average, we see a net reduction of 1% of the existing CTA/CPOs close per month. Since October, the count has gone from 2833 to 2708, a loss of approximately 120 managers over four months.

In February, 23 managers applied for a new registrations with the NFA. As usual, most of them are located in the USA. The United Kingdom was the second most popular location to start a new CTA. This largely follows the distribution of managers. Not all of the managers are new, but have decided to register a specific entity.

Funds withdrawing registrations was significantly higher in January, with a total of 54 managers handing back their regulatory status. The same applies for closed managers, a particular manager may have elected to close a specific local entity and may still be actively trading. 41 of the 54 managers were located in the US.