Funds
The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index rallied 2.22 per cent in January, supported by the global equity market rally which resulted from the Fed’s dovish stance and optimism over potential progress in the US-China trade talks.
The MSCI AC World Index (Local) gained 7.36 per cent over the month, recovering most of the losses it suffered in December last year. Returns were positive across geographic mandates, as most of the fund managers generated gains on the back of the equity market rallies around the globe. North American fund managers gained 3.65 per cent during the month, while their peers focusing on
Spouting Rock Asset Management has appointed Pamela Jacobs as its first Chief Sustainability Officer. In this new role, she’ll work with the firm’s management and investment teams to assess the Impact and ESG landscape and determine the best way to integrate these into the firm’s investment strategy, culture and philosophy.
“With the growing importance of sustainable investing across multiple generations and the entire client spectrum, identifying the right way to integrate that within our culture and DNA is absolutely paramount, and I can’t think of a better person to lead that effort than Pamela,” says Blakely Page, President and founder
The performance of broad hedge fund indices signal a sharp rebound of Special Situation strategies in January (+6.3 per cent), followed by L/S Equity strategies (+5.5 per cent), according to the latest Weekly Brief from Lyxor’s Cross Asset Research team.
The reason why they outperformed is related to their higher market beta and their bias towards cyclical sectors/ risk factors. Concurrently, CTAs were down 1.6 per cent in January due to their short equity positioning.
Lyxor writes: “If we take a longer perspective, there is only one strategy in positive territory since end of September: Merger Arbitrage. Yet, Special
Kuwait-based bank Warba Bank (Warba) has appointed investment consultant MJ Hudson Allenbridge to advise on the building out of its investment strategy and portfolio, including manager selection and integrated legal and investment due diligence.
MJ Hudson Allenbridge will be working in close partnership with Warba to develop its longer-term strategy and leading Sharia-compliant infrastructure across multiple asset classes, globally, including alternative investments. MJ Hudson Allenbridge advises a variety of institutional investors on strategy and investments across asset classes, and has extensive experience working with clients on complex and alternative investments.
Thuwaini Al Thuwaini, acting Chief Investment Banking Officer at
Q&A with Frank Napolitani and Jaclyn Greco of EisnerAmper’s Financial Services Practice
Last year witnessed a number of notable billion dollar launches, including D1 Capital. How would you sum up 2018 in respect of US start-up activity, generally speaking?
It was the year of the big launch, with ExodusPoint, D1 Capital, Kirkoswald Capital and the relaunch of Point72 Asset Management (formerly SAC Capital) – all listed in the public domain. From what has been published, these firms gathered approximately USD20 billion-plus of new launch capital from leading global investors in 2018. Beyond these large launches, the new launch space is slower
While hedge funds struggled in Q4, so did passive investments. Could higher volatility in 2019 help active stock pickers shine?
The fourth quarter of 2018 culminated in a substantial market correction. Everywhere one looked, it was a sea of red. Far from bringing festive cheer, on Christmas Eve both the Dow Jones and S&P 500 fell 2.5 per cent before a rapid rebound a couple of days later.
At one point the Dow was down 18.8 per cent from its October high, while the S&P had fallen 19.8 per cent.
Volatility is often the friend to hedge funds, historically, as
The market correction that ripped through Q4 2018 was perhaps a pre-cursor for increased volatility this year, and if that is the case, active fund managers – especially specialist sector-focused stock pickers and short specialists – could make substantial gains for their investors.
The volatility index (VIX), which some like to call the ‘fear and greed’ index, spiked above 36 on Christmas Eve while the Dow Jones crashed below 23,000 on 20th December: a 4,000 point decline from its October peak.
This shake-up was largely driven by macro factors and was, in many respects, a necessary event to release valuation
Alteralia Debt Fund FIL, a hedge fund investing in private debt, has topped the rankings for its category in 2018, according to data from the Spanish Association of Investment and Pension Funds (Inverco).
With an annual return of 6.43 per cent, the class C of Alteralia Debt Fund led the ranking in the Spanish hedge funds category last year. It was followed by class B and class A of Alteralia Debt Fund, which generated returns of 6.28 per cent and 6.13 per cent, respectively. The returns obtained by Alantra’s team are especially relevant in 2018’s difficult context for fixed income
Integral, a foreign exchange markets technology specialist for banks, brokers, and asset managers, has reported average daily volumes (ADV) across Integral platforms of USD34.7 billion in January 2019.
Though down slightly compared to the previous month, this represents an increase of 1 per cent relative to the same period in 2018.
“We’re committed to supporting our customers as they continue to capture share in their very competitive markets,” says Harpal Sandhu, CEO of Integral. “Integral’s leading-edge technology gives our customers an advantage that they are successfully leveraging.”
No other platform reaches as many, as varied, and as comprehensive a set of
Following an initial positive run in the first few days of the year, all of Societe Generale Prime Services’ CTA Indices were in negative territory by the end of January.
The SG Trend Index was down by -3.25 per cent and the SG Short-Term Traders Index was down by -1.71 per cent. The SG CTA Index returned -1.99 per cent and was helped slightly by three non-trend following managers’ positive performance in the month.
The SG Trend Indicator attributed losses to equity markets and currencies. They were positioned short in risk assets, hence equity markets’ reversal and gains in
