Jürg Bühler, co-founder of Zug, Switzerland-based Dighton World Wide Investment, is readying a multi-strategy, de-levered version of the firm’s US$100 million Dighton Funds SPC. The new strategy will launch within a few weeks with between US$20 million and US$30 million in assets.

The Dighton Funds, a discretionary, counter-trend following strategy that trades most of the liquid U.S. futures markets, including currencies, stock indices, energy and other commodities, returned 61% last month and is up 38.22% year-to-date. Its biggest drawdown year-to-date was in April, when it dropped 36.2% for the month. About 40% of the strategy is currently traded in a fund format, with the rest in managed accounts.

The new strategy will utilize about one-third of the leverage of its predecessor strategy, freeing it to invest the remaining balance in double-A- and triple-A- rated short maturity fixed-income instruments, according to Bühler. Co-founder Alex Moiseyev is the portfolio manager for the de-levered fund.
 
“The de-leveraged version of our trading will attract institutional investors,” said Bühler. “Most institutional investors have limited risk appetite and are looking for 15% to 20% per annum, and will be more comfortable risking only about 10%. We had many funds of funds and banks look at our product and liked it because it is uncorrelated to other hedge funds and CTAs, but they could not invest because the volatility was too high for them.”