Battle of the Trend Following Indexes: April 2026

When Convexity Cuts Both Ways: The Other Side

After March 2026 broke a two-month streak of universal gains with every benchmark finishing negative, April delivered the reverse: the strongest trend-following month of 2026 to date, with every benchmark in the Battle of the Trend Following Indexes finishing positive. The dispersion was again the widest of the year so far at 4.7 percentage points, and again it is where the most important story sits.

A Five-Week Round Trip

April was not a single clean directional month. It was a five-week round trip through one of the most disruptive intra-month paths in the current cycle. The TTU Trend Barometer traced the sequence 66, 55, 48, 55, 50, 55 across the weeks, finishing April back on the Neutral/Strong threshold where it began.

The path was driven by the Hormuz standoff. A tariff-driven commodity spike opened the month with WTI surging 18.06% in week one. A ceasefire reversal in week two reversed it. Iran’s declaration that the Strait was open to commercial shipping in week three pushed oil sharply lower again. Week four reversed that as the Strait remained effectively closed and the U.S. naval blockade held. In week five, all six energy contracts finally moved higher in unison for the first time in the current cycle, converting the prior week’s spike-and-reverse pattern into spike-and-extend.

The Convexity Spectrum on Display, Again

The April results: Classic Trend Index +6.7%, TTU TF +3.5%, IASG TF +3.4%, Systematic Momentum +3.3%, SG Trend +2.98%, SG CTA +2.6%, and BTOP50 +2.0%. Classic Trend’s monthly result was roughly twice that of the next-best peer.

The same convexity spectrum that explained March’s dispersion explains April’s, in the opposite direction. Programs using dynamic position sizing and volatility scaling captured a steadier but smaller share of the late-month directional alignment. Classic Trend, with its three-constituent concentrated construction and aggressive redeployment of unrealised equity into winning positions, captured the largest share. The same design that absorbed March’s 8.6% drawdown delivered April’s 6.7% gain.

Neither approach is wrong. They are different points on the spectrum, and back-to-back months of opposite-direction dispersion have made that spectrum visible in the clearest terms of the year.

The Trend Environment Round-Tripped

A notable feature of April was that the trend environment ran a full cycle of its own. The barometer fell eighteen percentage points across the opening fortnight as the tariff shock and ceasefire reversal disrupted established trend signals, even as the headline performance numbers were extraordinary. It then recovered seven points as energy resolved into a clean short signal, eased five points on the Hormuz re-closure and metals correction, and recovered the final five points in the closing week. The cycle ending exactly where it began signals that April’s gains were captured through the disruption rather than because of stable conditions.

Long-Run Picture, Stronger

The April result has materially advanced the long-run scoreboard. Classic Trend Index now stands at +146.3% since January 2020, a CAGR of 15.3%, retaining leadership across every major risk-adjusted measure (MAR 0.97, Sharpe 0.89, Sortino 1.40). The cumulative advantage over the next-best benchmark now sits at roughly 76 percentage points, up from 66 last month. BTOP50 continues to anchor the peer group with the lowest drawdown at 9.7% and the highest winning month ratio at 63.2%.

Read the Full Report

The complete April 2026 Battle of the Trend Following Indexes covers individual benchmark performance, the full statistical table, the VAMI chart, and a detailed reflection on what April means for systematic allocators considering the trade-offs of high-convexity trend following.

Click on this link to read the full report