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Morgan Stanley Launches New CTA UCITS Fund

Sally Ling

8 February 2013

Morgan Stanley has launched the MS Long Term Trends UCITS Fund under its FundLogic alternatives umbrella. The fund provides exposure to the Winton Capital Management Diversified Program.

This is the third in a series of four commodity trading advisor strategies to be made available in a UCITS format through Morgan Stanley’s partnership with Equinox Fund Management, a US-based multi-manager which specialises in constructing multiple CTA portfolios.

“Winton’s investment process … seeks to identify explanatory variables that have some predictive power over future returns. This goal is achieved by pursuing a diversified trading scheme that does not rely upon favourable conditions in any particular market, nor on market direction,” Alvise Munari, managing director and global head of equity derivatives, sales and financial engineering at Morgan Stanley, said in a statement.

Morgan Stanley describes Winton’s investment process as “quantitative, systematic and research-driven”. Its investment universe mainly consists of futures contracts linked to stock indices, bonds, short-term interest rates, currencies, precious and base metals, grains, livestock, energy and agricultural products.