Key Takeaways
- • Mandatum Managed Futures UCITS won The Hedge Fund Journal's UCITS Hedge award for Best Performing Fund in 2025 and over 2- and 3-year periods ending December 2025, in the CTA Trend Following (AUM under $150m) category.
- • The fund, launched in December 2019 and seeded by Mandatum's balance sheet and a Finnish pension fund, has evolved from pure trend following into a multi-factor, regime-adaptive strategy.
- • The strategy added mean reversion, carry and seasonality models to reduce correlation concentration, and its regime models dynamically adjust factor weights, trend speed and position sizing.
- • The fund outperformed the Barclay CTA index by 10.34% in 2024 and 5.14% in 2025, according to the article, with its largest outperformance during the August 2024 yen episode and April 2025 tariff turmoil.
- • Senior portfolio manager Ville Rantanen argues trend following remains durable and that the multi-strategy design can generate crisis alpha without an explicit target.
Summary
Mandatum Managed Futures UCITS has been named the winner of The Hedge Fund Journal's UCITS Hedge award for Best Performing Fund in 2025 and over 2 and 3 years ending December 2025, in the CTA Trend Following (AUM under $150m) strategy category. The fund was launched in December 2019 with two seeders: the balance sheet of Mandatum, one of Finland's largest insurance companies and institutional asset managers, and a Finnish pension fund with extensive experience allocating to hedge funds.
The strategy began as a pure trend follower but has evolved into a multi-factor approach that adapts to market regimes. According to senior portfolio manager Ville Rantanen, the manager added orthogonal strategies using mean reversion, carry and seasonality models, while deliberately avoiding new trend models because they tend to be highly correlated with one another. Rantanen describes the approach as a next-generation managed futures framework that combines diversifying return drivers which the firm views as alternative risk premia, deployed through a range of models across timeframes and asset classes.
Regime identification is integrated into the core investment and risk framework rather than run as an overlay. An ensemble of models guides dynamic factor weightings and the speed of trend following. The article cites the August 2024 Japanese yen crisis and the April 2025 tariff turmoil as episodes where regime signals prompted risk reduction and a shift to shorter-timeframe strategies. The strategy recorded outperformance over the Barclay CTA index of 10.34% in 2024 and 5.14% in 2025, per the article. The fund also varies its overall risk level rather than targeting constant volatility, and its meta-models adjust both model emphasis and position sizing. Netting of offsetting signals occurs at the portfolio level before execution.
Rantanen maintains that trend following remains durable, citing behavioural biases, business cycles, fund flows, shifting market frictions and AI-driven trends as drivers. He states that some degree of crisis alpha is a natural outcome of the design, though there is no explicit crisis alpha target. The article notes that the portfolio has historically shown low correlations to traditional assets and positive performance during periods of market stress.
The strategy began as a pure trend follower but has evolved into a multi-factor approach that adapts to market regimes. According to senior portfolio manager Ville Rantanen, the manager added orthogonal strategies using mean reversion, carry and seasonality models, while deliberately avoiding new trend models because they tend to be highly correlated with one another. Rantanen describes the approach as a next-generation managed futures framework that combines diversifying return drivers which the firm views as alternative risk premia, deployed through a range of models across timeframes and asset classes.
Regime identification is integrated into the core investment and risk framework rather than run as an overlay. An ensemble of models guides dynamic factor weightings and the speed of trend following. The article cites the August 2024 Japanese yen crisis and the April 2025 tariff turmoil as episodes where regime signals prompted risk reduction and a shift to shorter-timeframe strategies. The strategy recorded outperformance over the Barclay CTA index of 10.34% in 2024 and 5.14% in 2025, per the article. The fund also varies its overall risk level rather than targeting constant volatility, and its meta-models adjust both model emphasis and position sizing. Netting of offsetting signals occurs at the portfolio level before execution.
Rantanen maintains that trend following remains durable, citing behavioural biases, business cycles, fund flows, shifting market frictions and AI-driven trends as drivers. He states that some degree of crisis alpha is a natural outcome of the design, though there is no explicit crisis alpha target. The article notes that the portfolio has historically shown low correlations to traditional assets and positive performance during periods of market stress.
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