We don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first (real) day of March Madness, and the first day of Spring coincide with each other. In true Chicago fashion, it’s already snowed here, but that can’t dampen our spirits for our passion for college basketball. Because we like March Madness… And because we like managed futures… And because the business of raising money from investors sure feels like a tournament at times, with the bulk of CTA’s no doubt feeling like 16 seed Weber St. going up against perennial powerhouse Arizona – it was only natural for us to create our own little CTA tournament for some fun.
We can think of 20 different ways to seed the teams (CTAs), but ultimately created the bracket based on AUM, taking the 32 largest CTA’s by AUM according to the BarclayHedge database (the majors), and then adding the 32 largest CTA’s we track in house that weren’t in the previous list (the mid-majors and small conference teams), then seeding the programs 1 through 64, with the largest four managers by AUM getting 1 seeds, the next four largest 2 seeds, and so on…
Here’s the managed futures “tournament” for a little fun while watching the real tournament… fill it out and send us your picks for the CTA you think will most likely win the managed futures title over the next 3 to 5 years.
We all filled it out in house here, as well as reached out to a few basketball loving managed futures folks we know, and there were some ‘favorites’ among all the picks, including Covenant, Dominion, Quest, Revolution, and Eco.
Here’s some of the expert picks for those interested in seeing who CTA’s would invest with besides themselves (we gave CTA’s one rule. That they couldn’t pick their themselves as the winner, and only some of them listened):
- Attain Capital Director of Research, John Cummings — (See bracket)
- Covenant Capital – (See bracket)
- Clarke Capital – (See bracket)
- Dominion Capital – (See bracket)
- Wealth Advisor (who chose to remain anonymous)– (See bracket)