Haar Capital Management believes that further success in the managed futures industry can be had by sticking to its knitting. The Boca Raton, Fla.-based commodity trading adviser last month launched the Discretionary Ag Trading program, a discretionary agricultural-only futures strategy.

The program finished its first month of trading up 5.67%, with about $11 million in assets under management.

Haar’s new program is not entirely a carve-out of its existing and more diversified Commodity Trading program, according to founder Stanley Haar. “Obviously, it’s a subset of the markets that we trade under the bigger program,” he said. “However, we can hold different positions and different size positions in the new program.” 

But Haar admits that there’s going to be significant overlap between the two programs because of his background and experience in the agricultural sector, coupled with the success of the existing program within that sector. Last year, the former trader for the Continental Grain Co. returned 16.76% to investors in the $42 million Commodity program, largely from trading soybeans, wheat and cocoa.

Haar said his decision to launch the latest strategy was based largely on institutional demand for agricultural-based products. “There was a demand from some of those clients for an ag-only program. We think there’s more interest out there partly because the ags seem to be the center of attention by everybody whether it is Goldman Sachs or Jim Rogers.”

The Ag program charges a 2% management fee and 20% incentive fee. The minimum investment requirement is $500,000.