March 2026 Deck Download

(Mike) Slides 1-3:

Hi everyone, I’m Mike Pacitto with iM Global Partner, joined by Co-Founder of DBi and Co-Portfolio Manager, Andrew Beer. Thanks for watching our March 2026 update on the iM Global Partner DBi Managed Futures Strategy ETF– ticker: DBMF.

Well, what a March it was – a mega-whipsaw month if there ever was one – so no long introduction for this edition, let’s get right to the update Andrew – over to you –

(Andrew) Slide 4:

Thanks, Mike.

After firing on all cylinders in January and February, we gave back a about a third of YTD gains in March.  Basically, long gold and long non US stocks – both EAFE and emerging markets – drove big gains in the first two months of the year for CTAs and many macro investors.  The Iran war upended both those trades:  all three trades reversed in rather stunning 8-12% in a few weeks.  As we’ll show you in several slides, we gave back most of our gains.  We’re calling this the Great 2026 Macro Do Over.

Fortunately, as you’ll see in the second bullet point, we pivoted into a long crude oil position earlier this year, which generated large gains as crude has spiked 70% this year.  And, as we point out in the second bullet point, this is what we mean by “early, contrarian and right.”  CTAs generate most alpha from a handful of key trades, which are precisely what we seek to replicate efficiently.

Now turning to performance, in the left column chart, you can see that we finished the quarter up nearly 8%, slightly ahead of the SG CTA index and somewhat farther ahead of the Morningstar Systematic Trend Category category.  If you turn to the right, you’ll note that we essentially gave back year to date gains in March.  On this point, I have noted when the complexity of CTA hedge funds and mutual funds – many more instruments, more elaborate risk controls – has backfired.  In fairness, last month was a very good example where those features did reduce downside risk during a very, very sharp inflection point across the macro landscape.  Still, from a replication perspective, I’m pleased to see that we are still outperforming despite the severity of the market shock last month.

(Andrew) Slide 5:

Here’s our performance since launch of DBMF in 2019.  Over more than six and a half years, we’ve added more than 355 bps of returns per annum relative to the SocGen CTA Index.  Outperformance relative to the Morningstar category is even higher.  The live strategy track record back to July 2016 shows similar results.  To repeat what I said last month, and the month before, what we believe the data shows is that Commodity Trading Advisors, more commonly known as CTAs, generate a very valuable signal – sometimes early and contrarian information about big shifts in the macro landscape – but that high implementation costs significant erode performance.  On virtually every statistical measure, investors would have been better off replicating hedge fund returns over the past decade rather than investing in hedge funds or, for that matter, mutual funds.

(Andrew) Slide 6:

Here’s our slide on volatility-adjusted positioning.  The green bars are the volatility adjusted exposure of our ten futures contracts at the end of March, and the red dots are positioning at the end of December.  This is a pretty good picture of how dynamic the portfolio can be during these kinds of extreme market moves.

Moving from left to right, we started the year with no crude oil exposure, started adding in January, and by the end of March we were close to max long positioning.  Clearly, we like this positioning if the situation in Iran leads to further spikes in the price of oil.  We maintained our gold long, but in the face of the March reversal have dialed it back somewhat.  We continue to be long a spread trade between the Euro and Yen, but less so than several months ago.  We have shifted from a yield curve steepener to a more bearish view on Treasuries across the curve – which might be helpful in a resurgence of inflation.  And lastly, we’ve meaningfully cut net long exposure to equities, but have maintained exposure to outperformance of non-US equities – possibly a multi-year rotation as the risk premium on investing in the US has risen.  We should expect positioning to continue to adjust as markets hunt for direction.

(Andrew) Slide 7:

And finally, here’s year to date contributions to performance.   Well this says it all.  As noted earlier, we gave back gains in gold and most gains in equities, but have now made over 700 bps this year on crude oil.  Currencies and rates have been choppy.  While I prefer to see gains more evenly distributed – in the best periods, like 2022 and last year, we tend to see gains in three of four asset classes – I’ll take it given the magnitude of the moves in recent weeks.

And, with that, back to you. Mike.

(Mike) Slide 8:

Thanks Andrew –

Let’s wrap up here with long-term performance numbers for DBMF –– annualized return since inception including the month that was March 2026 dipped a bit and is now 9.16%, ahead of the Soc Gen CTA index by over 355 basis points annualized, and ahead of the Morningstar Systematic Trend Category Average by over 480 basis points.

And long-term outperformance against the traditional diversifier for equities – that being bonds as represented by the Bloomberg AGG – remains well intact with DBMF outperforming by over 760 basis points annualized.

(Mike) Slide 13-14:

Thanks everyone for checking out our monthly videos – if you have any suggestions in terms of things you’d like to see added, changes, feedback or inputs please let us know —

Otherwise if you have more questions about the strategy, would like further information or a call with us please don’t hesitate to reach out – just send us an email at: [email protected]