Most hedge funds plodded along in January, failing to keep up with the equity indexes and posting mildly positive results. This often happens at the beginning of the year, as managers take gains in late December in order to preserve their incentive fees. Typically, they are a bit slower on the trigger to put these trades back on in the following month, and as a result remain less than fully invested for the first few weeks of the year.
Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs), who specialize in capturing trends in the futures markets, didn't have a particularly good month either. Market choppiness from the events in Egypt and difficult currency markets were among the difficult circumstances faced by futures funds.
