---
title: "The largest alternatives fund has no one-year record"
url: "https://etf.net/news/the-largest-alternatives-fund-has-no-one-year-record-2026-09-28"
published_at: "2026-09-28T14:58:16.546Z"
updated_at: "2026-09-28T14:58:16.546Z"
byline: "ETF.net Research"
---

# The largest alternatives fund has no one-year record

iShares' systematic alternatives fund held $6.8 billion, 46% of the category, on Friday, September 25, 2026, and has no one-year record.

By ETF.net Research. Published Sep 28, 2026.

The largest alternatives fund has no one-year record. iShares' systematic alternatives fund, IALT, held $6.8 billion on Friday, September 25, **46%** of the category's $14.7 billion. It launched on December 8, 2025, and uses a model to take long and short positions across stocks, credit, and other broad markets.

By Tuesday, July 14, nearly $5 billion had flowed into it this year.

Thirty funds share the category. Of the 28 with a one-year record, the middle result was a gain of 10.4%, counting each fund once, with payouts reinvested. Weighting those 28 by size, the gain was 14.2%. Together they hold 53% of the money. A fund that holds the S&P 500, SPY, returned 18.5%. A fund that holds a broad mix of U.S. bonds, AGG, lost 1.0%.

The 10.4% leaves out IALT and Bitwise's BPRO, which launched in January and holds $103 million. The five largest funds hold 85% of the money.

Since the end of last year, weighted by assets, 29 funds gained **14.0%**. SPY gained 14.0% over that stretch. The middle of those 29, each counted once, gained 8.4%. IALT itself is up 18.2%. BPRO has no figure for that stretch.

## What the quarter showed

These funds are sold as a way to do something other than follow stocks and bonds. In the quarter that began at the end of June, SPY gained 3.5% and AGG lost 2.9%. On Wednesday, September 16, inside that quarter, the Federal Reserve raised the target range for its main policy rate by a quarter of a percentage point, to 3.75% to 4%.

In that quarter, Convergence's long/short fund, CLSE, was down 0.2%. NYLI's hedge multi-strategy fund, QAI, which tracks an index of hedge-fund strategies, was down 0.7%. IALT gained 6.3%.

Chart: IALT gained **6.3%** while CLSE and QAI fell

Over the past year CLSE gained 33.2%, the strongest result in the category, against 18.5% for SPY. In the quarter it did not rise with SPY. First Trust's long/short fund, FTLS, gained 11.9% over the year and 4.6% in the quarter.

First Trust says its multi-strategy fund, LALT, wants a mix that does not simply follow stocks and bonds. It gained 13.8% over the past year, and 3.3% in the quarter.

Simplify says its quantitative fund, QIS, seeks returns meant to stand apart from stocks, interest rates, and commodities, by linking its results to strategies run by other firms. Its largest positions are swaps labelled CTA and SBAR. CTA is a Simplify fund that trades futures. SBAR is a Simplify fund built to pay income.

QIS lost 41.6% over the past year, the weakest result in the category, in a fund of about $50 million. On Friday, September 25, the shares fell 7.0%, and about 705,000 of them changed hands, against a typical day of about 5,700. The fund also went ex-dividend 10 cents that day.

The quarter went the other way for this fund, which gained 10.7%. That gain did not undo the one-year loss.

Source: etf.net, https://etf.net/news/the-largest-alternatives-fund-has-no-one-year-record-2026-09-28. Please cite the page URL.