After taking last week off for the Memorial Day holiday, our weekly newsletter is up, and we’re looking forward again. The month of June is frequently associated with thoughts of romance- bright, sunny days paired with warm, lingering nights and a sense of long-awaited reprieve from the daily grind of months tinged in grey and frost. However, the June that greets us this year abandons the lascivious, winding hours enjoyed in days gone by in favor of an angular, barbed labyrinth of near misses and close calls for investors. As the sun warms Lake Michigan, the managed futures folks in our office are more on edge than most, closely monitoring trading activity and program performance during what looks to us like a make or break month for the asset class.

We’re looking back over the past several years and looking toward the horizon, and just as we see a perfect storm brewing between Euro concerns and the American fiscal cliff which should be to the benefit of managed futures, our worrisome glass-half-empty side sees another possible squall off the coast for managed futures as an asset class. The impetus is the simple fact that while the asset class surged in assets under management following 2008’s gains, performance has not kept pace with the growth in funds. What we see in front of us is a metaphorical line in the sand being drawn by investors- essentially telling the asset class to put up, or shut up.

Managed futures is an asset class in need of a crisis. That sounds terrible to say, and there are those that will hold it against us, but in our minds, we’re simply stating the facts. In a June where honeysuckle-scented nights are punctuated by market-shaking news from across the pond, and the score in political games stateside far outweighs that of our favorite baseball teams, it’s now or never for managed futures.

What do we mean by that? Check out the full newsletter to find out.