Alphadyne hires JPMorgan Commodity Index director Byuen

• Alphadyne Asset Management hired Thomas Byuen from JPMorgan as a commodity index portfolio manager.
• Hedge funds like Balyasny and Jain Global have poached the big traders of banking commodities in recent years.
• Despite losing money this year, commodity strategies have been the best performers in the past five years.

Hedge funds’ push into commodities continues unabated, even amid a down year in strategy.

Alphadyne Asset Management is the latest fund to pick up a sell-side commodity index portfolio manager, hiring JPMorgan’s Thomas Byuen, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Byuen, the global head of commodity index trading, joined the bank in 2012 out of college, according to his LinkedIn profile and industry records.

A JPMorgan spokesman declined to comment. Alphadyne, a macro fund with $8.8 billion in assets at the start of the year, did not respond to requests for comment.

Hedge funds have raided big banks for talent in commodity trading in recent years as the strategy has grown in popularity, thanks in part to billions in profits made by industrial giant Citadel. The strategy is down more than 4% this year, according to the hedge fund commodity index from industry research firm PivotalPath, but has gained 13.9% annualized over the past five years — the best-performing strategy in PivotalPath’s database .

Many funds refrain from trading in physical commodities, a difficult task that requires expensive infrastructure. Instead, they typically dip their toes by trading more liquid and less risky strategies such as futures and, increasingly, indices that span a wide range of products.

Balyasny Asset Management has hired Goldman Sachs commodity index chief Dan Deighton in 2022 to lead its push into the sector. LMR Partners hired Mike Severo, Deighton’s successor at the bank, earlier this year.

More recently, Jain Global, the most popular new hedge fund launch in recent years, hired BofA’s Max Lee, Head of Commodity and FX Systematic Trading. Commodities are a top strategy for the fund, which brought in former Mcacquarie executive David Hochberg to lead the unit.