We always get a kick out of Bloomberg headlines inspired by the one and only king of click-bait, Joe Weisenthal. The latest headline reads, “These Charts Tell The Story of World Markets in the First Quarter.”

(Disclaimer: Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results)
Chart Courtesy: Bloomberg

It’s interesting that the Bloomberg article shows charts of the Euro and Russian Ruble going down in Q1, but conveniently leaves it out of the chart of returns – listing just a single down market (Oil). And the world markets moniker is a bit peculiar when they only list 4 stock market indices (granted they are among the largest stock indices). We understand that Bloomberg probably didn’t want to take the time to list all the markets around the world, but the reality is professional managers are looking at more than 100 world markets trading around the clock.

What’s more interesting to us is how people who trade those world markets did in comparison. Global Macro Strategies and Managed Futures fit the bill – trading across commodities, currencies, stock indices, and interest rate products in what we’ve sometimes called a ‘Long/Short the World’ strategy.

Here’s the Attain Global Macro Fund and the Managed Futures Industry as a whole put alongside Bloomberg’s “world markets”. Not Too Shabby.

(Disclaimer: Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results)
Managed Futures = Newedge CTA Index
Global Macro = Attain Global Macro Fund