International Standard Asset Management (ISAM) intends to re-launch ISAM Gold. The gold fund was originally closed, with capital returned to investors, to give ISAM’s board the opportunity build the operational framework, the infrastructure and the technology required to support multiple funds.

“Now that ISAM has built up its own risk management, proprietary business and trading systems it makes sense to re-launch ISAM Gold,” said ISAM chief executive Stanley Fink, former CEO of the Man Group.

“The huge fiscal and budgetary deficits that many major countries are running as a result of the current recession and, in particular, the quantitative easing being done by several countries is making many investors nervous that most currencies will be debased. Against this backdrop, gold is seen as the ultimate reserve currency,” he added.

International Standard Asset Management invests in commodity and financial futures and foreign exchange products. Its flagship fund, ISAM Trend, is an absolute return fund that seeks to generate returns through disciplined and consistent trading.

Total return on the ISAM Trend since inception (June 1, 2007) is 17% and total assets under management is $150 million.

ISAM’s core investment base is comprised of institutional and high net worth clients in the UK, Middle East and South Africa.

ISAM was formed by Stanley Fink, Roy Sher, Alan Amler and Michael Levy in July 2008 at which time it was appointed Manager of ISAM Trend (formerly International Standard Macro Fund). Rod Barker joined as partner in June 2009.

ISAM Trend (formerly International Standard Macro Fund) is a global macro strategy which blends systematic trend following idea generation with dynamic trade and risk management.
The proprietary signal system actively tracks around 200 highly liquid instruments representing over 40 different markets across the major asset classes of equity, fixed income, foreign exchange and commodities.

Trading positions are initiated when the confluence of short, medium and long term trend following signals generates a high conviction signal. Each position is manually initiated with target profit-taking and stop-loss levels which are dynamically adjusted to a rules-based methodology. This is a key differentiator versus a purely automated process which results in a lower volatility of returns for the Fund and a low correlation relative to the CTA peer group.