Funds
Hedge funds established in 2018 undertook concerted efforts to launch their enterprises on a stable foundation, including raising minimum investment levels significantly over prior years, according to The Seward & Kissel 2018 New Hedge Fund Study, an annual analysis of new hedge funds performed by the leading law firm to the hedge fund industry.
In 2018, higher asset levels were sought in order to manage increasing costs and better attract institutional capital. From 2017 to 2018, the minimum investment accepted by new hedge funds shot up dramatically. The full study is available here.
In further evidence of the industry’s emphasis on
OpenGamma, a specialist in derivatives analytics, has raised USD10 million in funding led by early-stage fintech and B2B software venture capital firm Dawn.
The funding round includes participation from existing investors Accel, CME Ventures and ex-SunGuard CEO and prolific fintech angel investor Cristóbal Conde.
OpenGamma’s analytics solutions allow the world’s banks, hedge funds and asset managers to dramatically reduce the cost of trading derivatives. New regulation is forcing firms to post billions in capital to take market positions with significant increases over the next two years. This is at a time when returns are already under extreme pressure. As
Derivatives marketplace CME Group reached average daily volume (ADV) of 19.1 million contracts during March 2019, compared to 20.8 million contracts in March 2018.
In addition, total daily exchange trading volume surpassed 20 million contracts on each of the final six trading days in March.
Open interest (OI) at the end of March 2019 was 126 million contracts, up 9 per cent from year-end 2018 and unchanged from March 2018. First-quarter 2019 ADV marked the third-highest quarterly ADV ever with 18.6 million contracts, down from a record 22.2 million contracts in the first quarter of 2018.
Interest Rate volume averaged 10.4
Robert Quinn Consulting Limited (RQC) and Capricorn Fund Managers Limited (CFM) have partnered to create a unique new discretionary management regulatory hosting platform, Capricorn Regulatory Hosting.
Robert Quinn Consulting is a leading compliance consulting firm founded 12 years ago with extensive experience of FCA, SEC and CFTC compliance and offices in London and New York. Capricorn Fund Managers is part of the Capricorn Capital Group, an international family office with offices in London, Johannesburg and Hong Kong with a long history and speciality in alternative investments and backing fund managers.
The new platform brings together the alternative investment management and
Broadway Technology, a provider of high-performance fixed income and foreign exchange solutions, has acquired 100 per cent of Barracuda FX, a global provider of FX order management technology.
With this acquisition, Broadway will continue to expand its product suite and deliver its multi-asset solutions across more parts of the investment lifecycle while allowing clients to automate additional workflows.
Broadway will retain the full Barracuda FX team, and Barracuda FX will continue to operate as an independent company run by Kieran Fitzpatrick, CEO, and Maurice Curran, COO. Both executives will also assume senior roles leading Broadway’s FX business, as Head
Sova Capital has become the first international Individual Clearing Member (ICM) firm on the Moscow Exchange’s Derivatives and FX Markets, as a direct member of the National Clearing Centre (NCC), MOEX’s CCP.
The European Energy Exchange (EEX) increased volumes on its power derivatives markets by 57 per cent to 348.3 TWh in March 2019 (March 2018: 222.4 TWh).
In particular, the German Phelix-DE product (234.6 TWh, +75 per cent) as well as the Italian market (56.7 TWh, +58 per cent) contributed to this development. Furthermore, volumes on the markets for Austria (1.4 TWh), Spain (11.9 TWh) and Central/South-Eastern Europe (13.1 TWh) also increased significantly.
On the EEX markets for emission allowances, trading volumes totalled 101.1 million tonnes of CO2 in March (March 2018: 246.6 million tonnes of CO2). Primary Market Auctions
Hedge fund performance was slightly negative last week (19-26 March) on the back of underperformance from L/S Equity and Global Macro strategies (circa -0.5 per cent), but most strategies are still in positive territory month to date, according to the latest Weekly Brief from Lyxor’s Cross Asset Research team.
Discretionary Global Macro strategies recorded the worst performance (-0.7 per cent) in a context where bond yields fell significantly in the US and in Europe following the March 20th FOMC meeting. The Fed surprised market participants by announcing the end of the balance sheet runoff as soon as September 2019. Equity
As the first quarter of 2019 comes to an end, the latest Lyxor Hedge Fund Brief assesses recent hedge fund performance and the firm’s midterm outlook for hedge fund strategies.
Lyxor writes: “The recent turnaround in the global monetary stance, led by the Fed and more recently by the ECB, has further fueled the fixed income and credit market rally. 10-year bond yields in Germany are back to levels last seen in 2016, when deflation was a serious threat to economic activity. Meanwhile, High Yield credit spreads in Euro and U.S. Dollar tightened significantly in Q1, to levels close to
Commitments to Private Equity (PE) are breaking records, as investors seek better returns. At a time when the global hedge funds industry has seen record recent net outflows, some of hedge funds managers, who are riding this new wave, are choosing to launch hybrid PE-style funds, to tap into investor demand.
However, the ones who go down this path should be mindful of numerous operational traits, when morphing from an open-ended to a closed-ended fund structure.
Scott Burns (pictured), Senior Vice President of Horseshoe Group, a leading fund administrator specialised in alternative Investments comments: “We provide fund administration solutions to
