Nearly all managed futures investment vehicles tracked by BarclayHedge lost value in July as the Barclay CTA index registered a loss of 0.06 per cent.

The Diversified Traders Index fell 0.81 per cent, Discretionary Traders fell 0.54 per cent, Systemic Traders lost 0.30 per cent, and Currency Traders dropped 0.06 per cent.

The remaining two futures, Barclay’s Financial and Metals Traders Index and Agricultural Traders, did however gain 0.62 per cent and 0.06 per cent respectively.

The Barclay BTOP50 Index, which monitors performance of the largest CTAs, also lost 0.45 per cent in July, dropping 3.95 per cent overall this year.

However, BarclayHedge president Sol Waksman, points to some positive signals that appeared only towards the close of the month.

“Global equity markets started the month on a down note, but better than expected economic data helped to drive the MSCI World Index to an advance of almost 15 per cent from its monthly lows,” said Mr Waksman, noting that commodity prices also rallied in the last few days after starting the month low. “The CRB index jumped more than five per cent in the final two trading sessions, ending the month with a three per cent gain,” he added.

Formerly The Barclay Group, BarclayHedge tracks more than 6,000 funds and futures programmes, and updates 18 proprietary hedge fund indexes and eight managed futures indices.