It’s been a while since Chicago has been able to brag about first place. 3 years now for the Blackhawks, 8 for the White Sox, 15 years since Jordan and the Bulls, 28 years since Ditka coached a Bears champ, and as is well-reported and lamented – 105 years for the Cubs. So when a recent piece by All About Alpha (and the Balter Capital Management Hedge Fund Regional Performance Study) broke down hedge fund performance by major US city, we were thrilled to see our own Chicago come out on top. If we can’t have championship rings, we’ll take top-performing city:

Chicago was the best performing of the cities for the aggregate of that 12-year period, Boston second. Early in the period, and indeed until as late as 2007, Boston was either ahead of Chicago or effectively tied with it. The worst performing were: San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Greenwich….

Chicago also has the highest correlation with the Barclays Aggregate Index and the Barclays U.S. Treasury Index. This is intuitive: Chicago has a high concentration of commodity trading advisors. Chicago also has the highest correlation with global macro and CTA strategies as measured by the HFRI Macro and Barclays CTA indices respectively.

Head on over to see the whole story, along with a great table looking at the performance of all 7 cities for the last 1, 3, 5, 10, and 12 years. Of course, we definitely appreciate the author’s nod to managed futures as a source of Chicago’s strength, and couldn’t agree more.  Over the long term, we think the ability to prosper during tough economic times like the Internet bubble or the financial crisis is going to help keep Chicago near the top of that list (Disclaimer: past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results) – unless of course all these smart commodity traders realize it is damned cold here in the winter and head for warmer pastures.

We can’t sniff the Super Bowl right now, but we’ll take this record any day.