New York (HedgeCo.net) – After two down months the UCITS Hedge Fund Strategy (HFS) Index was able to break the negative trend and gained +0.68% in October 2011. Following two rather tumultuous months in the financial markets the UCITS HFS Index started with a slight weekly loss of -0.12% into the month.

Week two and three were quiet on the broad index level as well with modest gains of +0.04% and +0.03% respectively. It were the last days of trading that saw the index move more rapidly (+0.73%), obviously influenced by political decisions taken within the European Union and therefore finishing on a positive note. Of all funds tracked in the broad UCITS HFS Index 65.14% were able to return money in October 2011.

From a sub-strategy perspective eight strategies were able to finish positively in October, the best being Convertible (+1.95%), L/S Equity (+1.91%) and Event Driven (+1.51%). All three of them took losses in the first week of the month, but returned positive results after that from week to week, culminating in a strong finish in the last days of trading.

The three strategies that finished in the red were CTA (-2.71%), Currency (-1.49%) and Market Neutral (-0.14%). While the later took a hit in the first week of trading and couldn’t make up for it for the rest of the month, Currency took huge losses in the second and fourth week of trading in particular. CTA collected its losses throughout the whole month, although the second week of October was the worst from an intra-month perspective. Although October reversed the negative trend of the last two months still none of the sub-strategies is positive in 2011. The broad UCITS HFS Index now stands at -4.06% from a year to date perspective.