New York (HedgeCo.net) – Consumers and oil companies are on opposite sides when it comes to how they feel about oil declining over the last year and a half with oil companies suffering as the price of crude is the lowest it has been in 13 years. On the other hand, consumers are enjoying the lowest gas prices they have seen in over a decade. Consumers aren’t the only ones benefitting from the fall in oil prices. Apparently there are some computer-based hedge funds that are profiting from the decline.

According to a recent Reuters’ article, one Swedish hedge fund added 2-3% to its performance over the last two calendar years thanks to bearish bets on energy related investments. Lynx Asset Management has approximately $6 billion in assets under management and they use a number of algorithms to trade in a trend-following manner.
“It was a good trend to profit from last year, of course, and we made good money from the falling oil price,” said co-founder Svante Bergstrom.

Crude prices did reverse in January for a few weeks and that bounce did cause some funds to cut back on their bearish allocations and Lynx pared back their positions. According to information from Hedge Fund Research’s Systematic Diversified CTA index, the jump in oil prices caused a performance drop for the group, but the index still managed a gain of 2.22% during January. The index had been up 5.3% prior to the rally in oil.