Strong Start to 2026 for CTAs

As was the case in the hedge fund world, CTAs also benefitted from a strong start to 2026, with the Barclay CTA Index rising 2.63% to start the year with just under 90% of funds reporting.

All areas handled the volatility well with the exception of Agri traders, that index was down 0.31%, and, not unexpectedly, crypto traders, with the sell off in crypto assets sending the Barclay Cryptocurrency Traders Index to -2.61% to start the year.

Currency traders eked out gains, the index ending January +0.89% (with just over 82% of funds reporting), while the Discretionary Traders Index carried on the way it went through much of 2025, by outperforming the Systematic Traders Index. The former was +3.69% in January, while the latter was +2.56%.

There was better news from the MPI Barclay Elite Systematic Traders Index, which is constructed to capture the average return of the 20 largest systematic traders. This started 2026 at +3.56%, its best performance since December 2024 and second only to the Discretionary Traders Index and the Diversified Traders Index, which led the way to start the year at +3.95%.

There was a much starker divide between discretionary and systematic in the SG Macro Trading Indices, while the headline index was +3.84% in January, the SG Macro Trading Index (Discretionary) rose 5.51%, far outstripping the related Quantitative index, which rose, but only by 1.46%. In 2025, the SG Macro Discretionary Index outperformed the quant index by almost 7%.

The BTOP50 Index, which seeks to replicate the overall composition of the managed futures industry with regard to trading style and overall market exposure, also started well, rising an estimated 3.37% in January – a return only achieved once in 2025.