Claymore Investments, a leading Canadian ETF provider, has launched a ‘managed futures’ ETF, adding to the growing list of alternative hedge fund strategies now available to ETF investors.

Managed Futures performance (green) vs. major market indices (S&P/TSX, S&P 500 and 60/40 balanced portfolio)

The Claymore Managed Futures ETF (CMF) seeks to capitalise on price trends of a diverse universe of commodity, currency, equity and fixed income futures contracts through a systematic trend-following strategy.

The fund tracks the performance of the Guggenheim Managed Futures Index and offers investors the potential for downside protection, asset class diversification and a hedge against inflation.

Claymore, in partnership with Guggenheim, has taken what it believes is the best quantitative and rules-based approach to managed futures investing, and brought it to a low-cost index approach.  The strategy focuses on risk management, while also capturing the true uncorrelated “beta” that managed futures strategies can provide, with a low cost.

Som Seif, President & CEO of Claymore Investments, commented: “We continuously are striving to bring great investment products, with low cost. We believe this product will change the alternative investing market and will really challenge the convention that you need to pay high management and performance fees in order to get access to quality, uncorrelated asset classes.”

“Managed futures strategies have a long track record of above-average returns and diversification benefits, and this ETF provides investors access to this important strategy for portfolio diversification and risk reduction, along with transparency, no performance fees, daily liquidity, and no investment minimums,” Seif added

The Claymore Managed Futures ETF trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange with the ticker code CMF and has a management fee of 0.95% – far less than the ‘2% & 20%’ typically charged by the hedge fund community for such strategies.