Hathersage Capital Management LLC is a discretionary global macro investment manager founded in 1991. The firm is a foreign exchange specialist, expressing its global macro views strictly in G10 currencies, using interbank spot, forwards and vanilla options.
Hedgeweek’s readership voted Hathersage Capital Management’s Citi Access G10 Macro Access Strategy the Best Foreign Exchange Hedge Fund at the 2018 Hedgeweek Global Awards. This is the third year in a row that Hedgeweek has recognised Hathersage as the leading foreign exchange investment manager.
With the era of ultra-easy monetary policy nearing an end, rising interest rates and inflation fears have brought increasing concern about credit spreads and equity valuations. Advances in technology have accelerated financial innovation and the systematic, quantitative management of risk factors. But they have also increased correlations across asset classes. The recent sharp correction in equities and the spike in the VIX highlight the importance of non-correlated, satellite diversification around a core investment portfolio.
Hathersage’s flagship discretionary, macro-based strategy offers historically low average correlation when global equities are rising. But when global equities fall one standard deviation or more, that correlation becomes highly negative, helping to cushion the impact of a mark down in an equity beta-centric portfolio when it is needed the most.
The portfolio management team at Hathersage has been managing substantial G10 FX portfolios for more than three decades. In an age when systematic trading and alt-beta exposure has grown dramatically, an experienced discretionary manager who understands how to utilise optionality and understands market nuance can add meaningful portfolio diversification.
The Hathersage team uses traditional fundamental macroeconomic analysis to generate high probability trade ideas and create asymmetric directional exposures in its G10 Macro Access Strategy. Portfolios always maintain net long convexity, which limits the downside in moderate adverse price moves while enabling positive performance during periods of extreme market dislocations. The strategy has an annualised return of 19.05% since the 2011 inception of the programme on the Citi Macro Access Platform, making it the top absolute return performer among all participating managers over that time frame.
Responding to investor demand, principally out of Asia, for direct access to the Citi G10 Macro Access Strategy, Hathersage Capital Management has launched a Cayman-domiciled G10 Macro Access Fund. The fund employs the same award-winning strategy that was previously only available via the Citi Macro Access Platform. The fund offers a highly competitive fee structure (the higher of the management fee or incentive fee with a high water mark) with no long-term lock-ups.
On winning this year’s Hedgeweek award, Bill Lipschutz, Hathersage founder and Chief Investment Officer said: “Being recognised by Hedgeweek readers, many of whom are our investors, is a very special honour. We commend Hedgeweek on their great job acknowledging the achievements of the many talented investment managers and service providers in our industry.”
