Cached Google version of http://www.thesisfunds.com/home.asp mentions Rath in the following text under the first chart:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:SQ9CzUjVo6EJ:www.thesisfunds.com/home.asp+%22Gerrit+Rath%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

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Thursday, August 14, 2003
NAV:€9,441.81
Thesis Diversified offers access to a new alternative track record established by Gerrit Rath as trading manager of Thesis Holding AG. Mr Rath has achieved an annual average return in excess of 27% over the last 10 years. Thesis Diversified’s investment objective is to extend the existing track record. This shall be accomplished through a broad spectrum of investments in the stocks as well as futures markets. The trading methodology is based on a systematic quantitative analysis of the markets traded.
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Gerrit Rath's name no longer appears on the current version of that web page or anywhere else on that web site.

Here's an article from Vienna Magazine which mentions Rath in regards to a previous venture with a man named Hasenbichler:

http://www.viennamagazine.com/pages/mag/business.html

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Inside Vienna’s Wall Street

Alternative Investments made in Austria


The Vienna Stock Exchange is insignificant in the "concert" of the international financial markets. But the Austrian players are internationally active virtuosos when it comes to futures and hedge funds.

The name Hasenbichler is not only hard to pronounce for English-speaking investors, but it is also unusual in Austria. The business he started a little over ten years ago, in July 1990, was just as remarkable: a futures fund made in Austria. – But the many skeptical investors had one big question: Why should a futures fund trading with copper, oil or currency in the international futures and commodities exchanges be managed well … in Austria, of all places?
When Bernd Hasenbichler, 42, co-founder of Hasenbichler Commodities AG with his partner Gerrit Rath, septupled the capital of his investors within four years, the striking name also became synonymous with a new and extremely successful investment method in Austria which won recognition particularly among big investors. Investors investing a small portion of their assets in alternative investments, such as Hasenbichler and other funds to follow suite, would increase their revenues while at the same time decrease their risks.
Behind the success of "Hasenbichler & friends" (the "Vienna scene" actually gets along quite well) was and is a computer software which identifies trends in the financial markets as early as possible and makes recommendations on the timing of entry and exit – irrespective of the merchandise involved and irrespective of one’s betting on rising or dropping prices. Of course, the computer is not always right, but the secret is to clip losses rigorously and to keep the profits going as long as possible – experts call this method the "trend-following system" in money management.
Hasenbichler himself, who in the meantime, has gone his separate ways from his partner Rath, has now floated several funds and stretched a corporate network over the attractive offshore sites of the world. His firm is still headquartered in Vienna under the management of Julia Kralj.
Hasenbichler himself has been living in the Bahamas for years where some of the funds are located for fiscal reasons, while the latest funds product DRC is no longer managed in Malta or in the Bahamas but by Georg Reiter in Gibraltar.
The significance of the "Vienna scene", which developed in the wake of Hasenbichler, is disproportionately high for today’s futures markets, higher than in most European states, and this is not only true in relation to the marginal significance of the Vienna Stock market to the international capital markets.

The crisis of futures funds
The futures funds’ internationally desolate situation since the end of 1998 has left its mark on Hasenbichler & friends as well. Hasenbichler, who within several years since 1990, had advanced to the absolute best futures fund manager in the world with annual revenues ranging from 60 to 80 percent, saw revenues shrink to eight percent in 1999. And with the DRC fund floated in April 1999, investors were as much as 10 percent "underwater" by the end of July.
Who is to blame for this state of distress? The changing finance markets. Breaks have increased dramatically since the Russia crisis in the fall of 1998 and have not decreased significantly since. Although there are plenty of upward stock market trends, they are shorter and the frequent downward spikes keep forcing the trend-following programs to sell prematurely – for at this moment nobody knows whether the spikes might initiate a sustained crash after all. The result: the major and most renowned names in the world have been recording huge losses since 1999, for example George Soros, John W. Henry or Julian Robertson, who just closed his fund as long as the stock market ocean remains as tempestuous as it is now. Industry experts like Michael Zillner (Merit Management & Treuhand) attribute this change to the trend-following programs themselves: "So many of them have cropped up by now that they step on each other’s toes."
As, in view of the concurrent boom of a century in the technology markets, the investors are not exactly patient, Hasenbichler, as well as many other trend-following experts, is trying to make extra money elsewhere, i.e. via shorttrading or purchase of stock indexes. "We no longer have a pure trend-following program," says Julia Kralj, "but a pattern-recognition program which identifies not only trends but also a variety of other patterns. Our investments accommodate many different time horizons, starting from three to four days." The futures fund has also become a hedge fund, which basically invests into anything that seems promising at the time.
But Bernd Hasenbichler, who is currently managing assets worth about US-$ 250 million, is not interested in improvising for a long time. He is currently developing a completely new strategy: "The times of pure futures experts are over now. But we ourselves don’t have the know-how to develop the best software for something different than trend-following. So we will expand and offer new fund products conjointly with other experts. I agree with Paul Tudor Jones, one of the most experienced market wizards, who thinks we have to adapt to the changes of the market. Otherwise you perish."
www.hasenbichler.com

Benchmark: Pooled Funds
" Pooled " futures funds and hedge funds are really nothing new to the industry. A successful representative of this "genre" opened his doors in 1993 in the 18th District of Vienna: Georg Klein and Andreas Jeschko founded the Benchmark AG, whose funds, called Blue Danube, are not managed by them. Instead, they use the services of selected futures experts (called CTAs) in the entire world. The challenge is not only to find the best CTAs at a particular time, but also to put together a mix which will yield the highest possible return and present the lowest possible risk (fluctuations).
Austrian insurances and other big investors, in particular, have meanwhile recognized the benefits of including funds like these in their portfolio – funds which, since their establishment, have yielded at least ten percent annually, hardly suffered any major setbacks, and whose price development is completely different from that of stocks and loans. "Of course, we also have trend-followers in our mix; that’s why our last earnings were a little meager," says Georg Klein. In the past 18 to 24 months, even the pools did not manage to bring in noteworthy profits.
Thus Benchmark is also offering a new product in order to at least tide themselves over the hard times. The Alternative Strategies Fund invests in the various funds of the renowned American AIG Group, one of the largest American insurance companies which also has been developing an offering of "Alternative Investments" for many years. "AIG has funds for an extensive variety of specialized segments for the short-term currency trade, for raw materials arbitrage, merger arbitrage, long/short equity, giving us the opportunity to put together our fund of choice." Calculated back, this fund would have yielded revenues of almost 15 percent in 1999 and over 9 percent in 2000 up to July. Benchmark intends to use it now to re-stimulate its business with the institutional investors in Austria.
Incidentally, Georg Klein is moonlighting as the spokesman of VAIÖ, the association of foreign investment funds in Austria, which virtually all international fund providers belong to.
www.benchmark.at

SMN: The US hedge fund mix
In 1996, Alexander Swoboda, Christian Mayer and Michael Neubauer established another fund which, based on trend-following software, performed very successfully. Within two years, the fund grew by a handsome 50 percent. It yielded a volume of over one billion ATS (now: 850 billion ATS) – a quite considerable figure for this industry – placed primarily with the major institutional investors. Then came the crisis year 1998, with the consequences already mentioned above. "True, we’re also in the red, but we’re much better off than the indices we’re comparing ourselves to. We are benefiting from this internationally in the industry … the interest in our fund is stronger than ever before. For we have shown that we can handle risks. Of course, this is of little use when dealing with the Austrian clients who want to see absolute earnings," says Christian Mayer, who operates from Vienna with Michael Neubauer. The other partner, Swoboda, trades and lives in Bermuda.
SMN is now also taking the appropriate steps to deal with the unsatisfactory situation and is going to float a fund which will combine a variety of investment strategies. Says Mayer, "We’ve already had this fund for three years but did not sell it. Investors can expect an annual performance of ten to 20 percent. We are constantly meeting with the various managers who use different management styles in the United States, and starting in the fall, we will start up with six to eight funds. Ultimately we project to have between 12 and 14." www.smn.at

FTC: The Fight-it-out Strategy
With his FTC Funds (Futures Trading Concepts), Anders Eduard Pomeranz has also been offering a fund since 1996 based on long-term trend-following, money management and strict discipline and risk management (the computer’s recommendations are followed in almost all cases). He was similarly successful until 1998 and has had similar revenue problems as others since. "Our industry is used to seeing such phases where, for various reasons, earnings might be low for one or even two years. This always passes. We stay 100 percent consistent in our approach, for we are coming off well right now within the scope of comparable funds. That’s why I think this is an especially opportune entry time."
The current size of the FTC Fund is around 500 million AST, and this is only the beginning for Pomeranz and his colleague Gerd Gwiss, the managing director: "In five years from now, we want to be among the ten largest tenderers on the market. That means, a fund worth at least one billion US-$."
www.ftc.at

Quadriga: The Austrian Hedge Fund
The Quadriga Fund, launched in 1996, is different from its Austrian fellows in only one respect: it is also based on trend-following software, but it invests into the "substance", liquid stocks, too. The difference became especially obvious in 1999: With the earnings made in the technology markets during the two excellent months November and December, Quadriga clearly outpaced all of its Austrian fellows and secured itself a top position in all rankings with a revenue of 25 percent plus. But from January till July 2000, Quadriga, too, was almost in the red.
Christian Baha, Quadriga founder and a recent member of the board, thus has every reason to be pleased with the strong increase in volumes. From the end of 1998 to the end of June, the fund grew from 46 to over 500 million ATS, and "it is expected to reach a billion by the end of the year." In order to market his successful program even further in this rough stock market environment, he has a few plans: "Since the beginning of the year, we’ve had the GCT Fund, a pure futures fund, and recently also a Quadriga hedge fund, which is attractive to investors in the whole world as an offshore fund. And this year, we are also opening a distribution agency in the United States as the first Austrian futures fund and will offer a Quadriga fund issued in Delaware." Since the beginning of the year trading is done from Grenada, "primarily because of the low crime rate and because the island is relatively safe from hurricanes. The authorities there are putting forth a lot more effort than in other Caribbean tax havens. A bank license can be had for under US-$ 50,000."
One of Baha’s secrets of success is the software: The Teletrader AG is Baha’s second main pillar, which produces not only very successful trader software but also finance portals on the Internet and a lot more. "Our software is now used by banks and brokers in 18 countries in the world. But that is only the beginning: Our new software "system trader" will globally set new standards – a ready-to-use software package which provides a professional futures trader with everything he or she needs. Technical entry signals, trend-following and exit signals, money management and asset allocation. It is so good that I still have not definitively made up my mind to sell it."
www.quadriga.at
www.teletrader.com

Vienna Portfolio Management: Commitment is guaranteed
Originally established as an outlet for Barings and other international fund firms in Austria, the Vienna Portfolio Management AG (VPM) soon developed its very own specialty: guaranteed products – investments with a fixed term for large investors that can make you profits but not losses. How is that possible? Simply just by taking portions of the potential earnings to completely hedge the risk of loss. This works according to the following approximate scheme: If, for example, the S & P 500 increases by 20 percent in the next three years, you will only make 15 percent. If, on the other hand, it drops, you always get your original investment back.
Manfred Kastner, who has recently moved to the Cayman Islands, and Markus Pucher tinkered with such products for their own distribution and increasingly for big banks in Austria and Germany; they were glad to offer an item which made them unique among the flood of funds. All in all, VPM-designed products worth far over five billion ATS have been sold.
The last coup from the house of VPM is a further development of a guaranteed product, which is called "Absolute Plus": a fund under whose umbrella a host of carefully selected and coordinated equity funds, loan funds and alternative funds (futures and hedge funds) are gathered, and, to top it off, the entire product is secured with an investment guarantee. "We are expecting annual returns for our investors ranging from eight to twelve percent, with an investment guarantee of 105 percent on the original investment after ten years," promises VPM managing director Markus Pucher. www.vpm.at

Merit: Complete Service for the Funds
Established as early as the end of the 1980’s and thus, along with Hasenbichler, the doyen of the Austrian futures scene, the Merit Management & Treuhand under Dr. Michael Zillner has always pursued a different strategy: "We offer everything a futures fund or other user of futures and options needs. We are brokers ourselves; we recently started to offer 24-hour service. That is one job that will become more and more important, for even the best broker in the world is no longer equally competent in all stock markets of the world, from Open Outcry in Chicago to online trading. We know the best brokers everywhere, and the difference in execution is measurable and always speaks for us. We also offer an excellent system of risk management, transparent accounting, legal and tax consulting etc."
In the meantime, Merit, now sporting a workforce of 23, is no longer offering its services to the ultimate customers, only as managed accounts "to large customers and only in this form because it’s simpler and cheaper. We simply accept a management mandate for an account of the client.”
www.merit.vienna.at
Copyright © 2000 by Vienna Magazine,
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Here's a 1993 article from Futures Magazine

http://www.turtletrader.ch/reprint.html

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TOP TRADERS WHO TAMED THE ROUGH AND TUMBLE MARKETS OF 1993

Reprinted from Futures March 1994 issue. Copyright 1994 by Oster Communicatons, Inc, 219 Parkade, PO Box 6, Cedar Palls, Iowa 50613

With currencies still gyrating and interest rates booming, 1993 gave many traders a wild and wooly ride. The winners are tried and true: those who tamed the markets in the past.

By Ginger Szak


What a difference a year makes. In 1992, the top fund performer was the Patriot Fund III, traded by A.O. Management and Colorado Commodities, with a 58% gain. In 1993, the fund was down 21.5%

John W. Henry-on the other hand-had a single digit down year in 1992-and this year tops the fund performance with a 69% return in his JWH Global Strategies (H) G fund, which follows his yen-trading model, focusing on the Japanese yen, yen bond and Nikkei stock index.

Furthermore, this year's top 10 trading advisors with more than $10 million under management-compiled by Barclay Trading Group-reads like a fan club list for Richard J. Dennis...R Jerry Parker of Chesapeake Capital Corp. (up 61.6%, his fund was up 67.5%), and Paul Rabar of Rabar Market Research (up 49.3%) dot the list. Mark J. Walsh, not a turtle but a close associate of the group (see "Mark J. Walsh: Long-term view of the markets," below), scored with a 78.1% return, while Dennis' partner in the turtle project, William Eckhardt, of Eckhardt trading Co., had a 56% return this year. Despite this Grade systematized score card, topping the list with a 148.4% return was A. Gary Shilling & Co., an economist, who of all things, bases his trading on his fundamental economic forecast (see "Economics bottom line or Thematic," Trader Profile, January 1994).

Gerrit Rath, head trader of Hasenbichler Commodities in Vienna, Austria, once again was in the tops list with a 70.1% return the fund was up 64.5%). Rath has been hot since launching the group in 1990, garnering a 494.4% total compounded return. A systematized trader, the Austrian follows a fully global diversified market approach-including trading the London Metals Exchange, a tricky arena that fools the best traders.

The year seemed to belong to trend-followers, but those who were long-term and highly diversified. David Druz of Tactical Investment Management (see "Tactical, Druz: Doctor keeps pulse of markets," right), embodies that method. In early February he had on four trades that were more than a year old-and that was fewer than normal.

Tactical, Druz: Doctor keeps pulse of markets

With emergency room medicine on your resume, commodities trading is easy.

Or so it seems for David Druz-part doctor, part trader-all money maker. Druz, president of Tactical Investment Management Corp., based in Haleiwa, Hawaii, had two of the top performing public futures funds in 1993: Tactical Commodity Fund, his first fund opened in 1981 (up 56.5%) and Tactical Futures Fund II, launched in 1984 (up 51.3%). Each started with about $200,000. Today, they have about $2 million each. Almost all that money was made, not raised, Druz notes.

Double digits are nothing new for Druz, whose compounded annual return since starting is roughly 615%. His best year was 1990, when he brought in 96% return. His worst year was 1986, when he was down 31% at year's end. He gives no excuses for volatility-in fact, he thrives on it. After all, he contends, he's in the business to make money. That's his goal.

Druz's interest in futures started while he attended the University of Illinois in Champaign, majoring in electrical engineering and computer science. A fraternity brother made a killing in the markets, and Druz was hooked. His buddy got him a job at Stotler & Co. doing fundamental research. Despite this interest, he continued on to medical school. He attended Johns Hopkins University, but still managed to do research for Stotler, where he got into "weird scattergrams about previous years' crops and did a lot of correlation analysis of supply/demand," aiding the firm in its forecasts.

"The amazing thing to me was this was all baloney," he says. "The fundamental analysis was great, but I never saw a correlation between that and trading...the fact I did all this fundamental analysis was instrumental in pushing me away from it. It just didn't work."

After his residency at Michigan State, Druz joined a colleague in setting up an emergency medical group in Alaska, which he saw as "a business challenge." But he always loved Hawaii-and moved the trading office there in 1984. From 1984 to 1991 he toggled between trading in Hawaii and medicine in Alaska. In mid-l991 he retired from medicine to concentrate on his first love: the markets.

To "be around forever" holds certain principles, he says. They don't trade indexes and stay in trades long-term. Many of his trades are on for more than a year. And fiddling with a system - optimizing for markets -"is death," he says.

"There are whole families of things that seem to work forever on any market," Druz says. "The down side is they are very volatile because they are never curve-fit. They're never exactly fit to any particular market or market condition. But over the long run, they do extract money from the market."

Key to his trading is money management. "We focused on how we divvied up the risk in our portfolio, how much risk we take in each market, how many contracts we trade in each market, that's the stuff that really counts...if you have money management wired, you can let volatility go because you know it doesn't have any correlation with the risk of ruin. You can use volatility to your advantage."
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-Hap