Capula launches systematic commodities CTA led by Yao Ooi

Capula Investment Management has launched the Capula Alternative Markets Alpha Fund, a quantitative Commodity Trading Advisor strategy focused on commodities. The fund is led by Yao Hua Ooi and the London-based firm is presenting the strategy to prospective investors.

The fund will run algorithmic models that take positions across commodity markets. The program aims to generate returns from price trends and relative-value opportunities rather than company fundamentals or discretionary stock selection.

Yao Hua Ooi joined Capula last year. He spent nearly two decades at AQR Capital Management, where he was a principal and helped develop a multi-market systematic program that managed about $6.3 billion.

Capula manages roughly $35 billion and has been expanding beyond its macro and fixed-income businesses. Last year the firm hired John Anderson, formerly global co-head of fixed income and commodities at Millennium Management, to help build a multi-strategy platform. The firm has also added two energy traders and has begun allocating capital to external managers, including a reported $450 million investment in Cinctive Capital Management.

People familiar with the matter put the fund’s capacity target at $2 billion to $3 billion. The strategy is being positioned for institutional investors seeking diversified exposure to systematic commodity markets. Capula and AQR did not comment when contacted.

A quantitative CTA uses statistical models and systematic signals to trade futures and other exchange-traded contracts across energy, metals and agricultural markets. Such strategies can be directional, timing trends in prices, or relative-value oriented, exploiting price differences between related contracts. The new Capula fund is described as a broad-based program applying systematic techniques across commodity sectors rather than concentrating on a single market.