Brummer & Partners’ flagship multi-strategy hedge fund vehicle ended 2021 in negative territory, despite solid annual showings from its trend-following, macro and systematic equity names.
Brummer & Partners’ flagship multi-strategy hedge fund vehicle ended 2021 in negative territory, despite solid annual showings from its trend-following, macro and systematic equity names.
The Brummer Multi-Strategy (BMS) fund lost 2.1 per cent in 2021, having posted a 0.1 per cent hit for December, while its twice leveraged BMS 2xL class ended the year down 5.1 per cent, nursing a 0.2 per cent December loss.
On the upside, leading the way was Florin Court, which notched up a stellar 27.8 per cent return over the course of the year. The trend-following strategy ended December down slightly, pulling back by 0.6 per cent for the month having earlier scored a 5.1 per cent gain in October, powered by major moves in bonds and commodities markets.
Discretionary macro manager Arete was up 8 per cent for the year, having risen 0.2 per cent in December, while systematic equity strategy AlphaCrest rose 6.8 per cent over the past 12 months, aided by a 5 per cent advance last month.
Also in positive territory was Pantechnicon, a long/short equity strategy recently added to the BMS vehicle, which closed the year up 1.2 per cent, having added 0.2 per cent in December. Managed futures fund Lynx ended the year in marginally positive territory at 0.8 per cent, despite having lost 1.4 per cent last month.
However, sharp losses registered earlier in the year by fixed income relative manager Frost, from which BMS has now fully redeemed its allocation, took its toll on BMS’s overall year-end total. Frost plummeted by more than 23 per cent over the 11-month period up to the end of November prior to Brummer pulling the plug on December 1.
Elsewhere, Manticore tumbled 5.2 per cent annually in 2021, which included a 2.3 per cent December loss for the long/short equity manager. Kersley, a financials-focused long/short equity manager, ended the year down 0.2 per cent, despite rising 0.2 per cent for the month of December.
Stockholm-headquartered Brummer marginally increased its allocation to Florin Court recently, while reducing Arete and Manticore’s allocation and redeemed fully from Frost’s 3.9 per cent allocation.
The multi-strategy hedge fund pioneer recently unveiled plans to increase the portfolio’s diversification through the addition of a new equity market neutral investment mandate. Set to launch in spring this year, initially sized at USD175 million, it is led by technology-focused portfolio manager Henrik Nyblom.
Initially solely for BMS investors, Nyblom’s market neutral mandate will take long and short position in technology companies in the Nordic region and Europe. Nyblom has some 25 years’ experience as an analyst and portfolio manager in the technology sector, and most recently he was portfolio manager of one of Europe’s largest tech funds Swedbank Robur Ny Teknik.
In October, BMS redeemed its entire investment in tech-focused equity hedge fund Black-and-White, which was replaced in the portfolio by Pantechnicon and Kersley. The portfolio managers also redeemed its 1.2 per cent allocation to Lynx Constellation and instead increased the allocation to Lynx main programme.
That move came on the back of a withdrawal from long/short credit strategy Observatory during the summer.
