The Systematic Fixed Income senior portfolio manager explains how BlackRock’s $8bn multi-strategy fund combines uncorrelated strategies and systematic risk management
Jeffrey Rosenberg is Senior Portfolio Manager of Systematic Fixed Income at BlackRock. “ This is a multi-strategy fund that’s managed by our systematic fixed income group. We have three main strategies: a core multi-sector fixed income strategy, a defensive equity long-short strategy and a group of macro strategies including global rates and relative-orientated strategies.”
The fund comprises $8bn in AUM and has coincided with the astronomical growth of multi-strategy funds in the alternative space, which have been the de facto preference for allocators investing in hedge funds in the past several years. “ What we’ve seen on the institutional side of systematic investing is the success of the multi-strategy approach is the blend of uncorrelated, highly diversified strategies.” He adds, “Where this can thrive is having fully systematised risk models that can parameterize through optimization to limit or mitigate the amount of market beta and factor exposure before you put trades.”
Included in the systematic platform is the IALT, the iShares Systematic Alternatives Active ETF. For BlackRock, this means pairing this investment instrument with the systematic multistrategy fund. “What we are trying to do is to still deliver alpha and uncorrelated mutli-strategy approaches and then wrap those into an ETF wrapper. This is about extending accessibility to investors and funds.”
Analyzing the current opportunity set, Rosenberg believes that the primary factor influencing all behaviour and activity on both a macro and micro level is AI. He sees its dispersing influence across the economic landscape as a great opportunity for a multi-strat investor, “ at a macro level, you see huge macroeconomic impact: capital expenditure and the incredible impact it is had on energy markets and the data centre revolution and on the micro level, the individual winners and losers at the sector level.”
Watch the full Alternative Views interview below.
