With the S&P500 and the ASX both down around 7%, and energy and commodities in disarray, it seems strange to be saying that November saw some improvement and signs of stability. With 70% of funds reporting to date, the average November return of Absolute Return funds in AFM’s database was minus 2.81%.
The debate in the media continues as to whether Absolute Return Funds as a whole should be reporting negative results, but a more careful analysis shows that strategy selection has determined investors’ returns in 2008.
Once again the best performing strategies were non-equity based (i.e. Global Macro, Commodities, Currencies and Managed Futures). Equity based strategies suffered but still on average outperformed the underlying equity benchmarks with the S&P/ASX200 Accumulation Index ending down 6.2% for the month, the S&P500 Total Return Index down 7.18%.
Click on the link below for the full report.
