ALTIN, the Swiss alternative investment company with a portfolio featuring over 40 underlying hedge funds, saw an increase in its share price of 8.60% and 10.20% on the Swiss (SIX) and London (LSE) exchanges respectively in 2014.
Thanks to the permanent capital base provided by its structure, the ALTIN portfolio can be allocated to funds that require a slightly longer lock-up but offer potentially higher returns, without incurring any liquidity mismatch.
The portfolio remains however highly liquid, with 62.2% of assets invested in funds with monthly or better liquidity, allowing the manager to make allocation shifts when deemed necessary. The ALTIN NAV per share was up +5.75% over 20141, clearly outperforming the HFRI index (+3.19%).
The top contributors for the quarter were quite diverse, again showing the diversity of sources of return in ALTIN. Best of all was a power trader who rightly predicted warmer weather towards the end of the year and strongly capitalised on subsequent collapsing electricity prices.
Just behind there is a Systematic Macro fund, which is actually by far the best contributor in 2014. Its approximately two week trading horizon has been very much in sync with the prevailing market conditions of the last two years.
More generally 2014 was a good year for most Systematic Macro funds, including trend followers, as one could see strong trends in fixed income, currencies and in the second half of the year, energy. In third place, we have a Chinese Equity Long /Short manager, which benefited strongly from the rally in A-shares that followed the opening of the Shanghai-Hong Kong Connect, the cross-border investment channel that allows investors in each market to trade on the other market using their local brokers and clearing houses.
