The first few rounds of our tournament have been determined by risk and performance metrics that evaluate a program’s entire track record. Certainly, it’s good to know that a manager has produced results – past performance may not be indicative of future results, but a track record is still one of the only ways one can evaluate a program (and it’s why we won’t include a program in our rankings until it has at least 3 years of performance data to evaluate).

But sometimes a long track record can obscure as much as it reveals. A program with amazing performance in its early years may not be producing as well in its old age (and indeed, this isexactly what we have observed with some of the biggest programs out there). Stories of glory days gone by are great, but it usually leaves investors wondering – what have you done for me lately?

That’s why our ranking algorithm compares programs on shorter time frames, too. And for the fourth round of our Managed Futures Madness tournament, the metric selected to determine which CTAs will advance to the final four is 3-year Compound Rate of Return.

3-year Compound ROR certainly favors younger programs, and that meant that the two lowest-seeded CTAs still alive in our tournament – White River and Junzi Capital – both stayed alive, knocking out #4 seed Paskewitz and #1 seed Man AHL. The tournament’s other remaining #1 seed – Aspect Capital – also fell to #7 seed Covenant Capital. #3 seed Global Ag was the only higher-seeded CTA to survive this round, knocking out #8 seed Global Sigma.

With only two more rounds to go, all of the #1 and #2 seeded programs are out of the running. Stay tuned to find out what happens next.