Over two thirds of respondents of the Deutsche Bank annual Alternative Investment Survey invest in systematic strategies, including one in every two who plan to add to one or more quantitative sub-strategies in 2016. The largest investment consultants and pension funds are driving demand: 45% of these respondents plan to add to one or more systematic strategies, including quantitative equity market neutral, CTA, quantitative macro, quantitative equity and quantitative multi-strategy.

The recent CTA performances encourage institutional investors to more closely monitor this type of hedge fund. Thus, according to Preqin, 52% of them wish to increase their exposure to this type of alternative strategy this year (vs 14% last year).

Year to date, most alternative strategy performance are negative. Despite this challenging environment, CTAs have recorded an excellent start since the beginning of the year. According to Credit Suisse, CTAs posted a gain of 7.38% in late February 2016, the strongest performance of all alternative strategies...

Donald A. Steinbrugge, managing partner at Agecroft Partners – US third party marketing firm specialized in hedge funds - gave us information regarding demand from institutional investors for CTAs

During the first quarter of 2016, hedge funds suffered a 2% drawdown according to the Lyxor Hedge Fund index. Across hedge fund strategies, CTAs and Merger Arbitrage have been the only segments of the industry being able to post returns in positive territory in Q1.