February is barely half-way done, and it is already shaping up as the worst month in history for most quant, CTA and managed futures funds since the great quant blow up of August 2007. And not only: a quick look at the best and worst performers so far in 2018 shows a distinct skew to the downside, with the worst performing hedge fund down 25% in 2018 compared to the 14.5% return for the best.
However, as we have extensively discussed recently, by far the worst hit were the various quant, stat-arb, momentum and trend following funds: here the bloodbath was almost unprecedented as the following snapshot of quant/systematic/managed futures funds in the latest HSBC report demonstrates.
Finally, here is our usual universe of some of the most recognizable, marquee hedge fund names, sorted by MTD performance as of mid-February. It is clear that almost none of the “hedge” funds was hedged for the events that took place in the week of February 5. And yes, it is hardly ironic that as recently as 3 weeks ago, the famously named Tulip-Trend Fund was one of the best performing hedge funds of the year, before promptly crashing to worst.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2ofpEnu Tyler Durden