Commodity trading advisor performance slipped 0.11 per cent last month, taking the decline so far in 2012 to 0.62 per cent, figures from BarclayHedge show.

Half the eight strategies in the Barclay CTA Index made gains in April. The Barclay Agricultural Traders Index went up by 1.36 per cent, Discretionary Traders by 0.48 per cent and Currency Traders added 0.34 per cent.

Diversified Traders and Systematic Traders were down by 0.54 per cent and 0.37 per cent respectively.

“Although commodity prices dropped in April…several sectors such as industrial metals, natural gas, and soybeans moved higher making for a more difficult trading environment,” said Sol Waksman, founder and president of BarclayHedge, which actively tracks more than 6,200 hedge funds, funds of hedge funds, and managed futures programmes.

“Investors started to move back into risk-off mode, sending equity and commodity prices lower and bidding up bond prices,” said Waksman.