Funds
The demand among institutional investors for managed account solutions continues to evolve, as they seek out new structuring solutions and vehicles to meet their investment return, liquidity, transparency and jurisdictional needs.
One of the manifestations of this evolution is the emergence of using regulated fund vehicles to optimise their hedge fund allocations, not only in UCITS funds but also Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) under the European AIFM Directive. Lyxor Asset Management has been operating managed accounts for two decades. Over that time, it has seen, and responded to, changing market dynamics. More recently, this has meant focusing on building out a
By Andrew Lapkin – Institutional investors are increasingly shifting their hedge fund investments from traditional, commingled structures to Dedicated Managed Accounts (DMAs). A DMA is a customised single investor hedge fund with portfolio assets ultimately owned (and controlled) by the investor. One of the most attractive benefits of DMAs is the opportunity to utilise the DMA structure to achieve “structural alpha”. Structural alpha is the ability to enhance returns by taking advantage of the unique structural aspects of a DMA. There are several ways that investors achieve structural alpha through a DMA structure.
A DMA is a separate vehicle and can
In an environment of fund fee compression, leveraging a private managed account platform may offer an easier way for an outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) to get approval from pension fund investment committees.
The traditional consultant model has been non-discretionary, where the consultant makes investment suggestions to the pension plan board, which then makes a collective decision. Now, the consultant community is pivoting to act as the OCIO as institutions look to reduce pressure on internal resources and deal with the complexity of generating sufficient returns to meet their long-term liabilities.
The growth opportunity in this space is clear, with
Some of the industry’s leading managed account platform providers continue to evolve their solution-based models to meet the custom desires of institutional investors. Platforms have come a long way in the last decade. Whereas originally, they were built as product-focused distribution models to put managers in the shop window, many of today’s platforms have pivoted to offer bespoke, solutions businesses to address the myriad demands of investors, large and small.
Public commingled platforms, such as those operated by Lyxor Asset Management, remain highly viable, with Lyxor in particular evolving the platform beyond its Jersey roots to cater increasingly to European
State Street Global Advisors, the asset management arm of State Street Corporation, has launched the SPDR Bond Compass.
The Bond Compass will be published quarterly and uses proprietary research from State Street Global Markets’, the research and trading division of State Street. It presents a snapshot of global fixed income flows and holdings indicators from Q3 2018, derived from a sample of USD10 trillion of assets, which captures more than 10 per cent of the world’s outstanding fixed income holdings. In so doing, the Bond Compass provides unique insight into how investors are positioning their portfolios based on State Street Global
AlphaCentric has surpassed USD2.5 billion in assets under management (AUM). This represents a 150 per cent increase in assets in 13 months.
“AlphaCentric’s growth over the last four years is a testament to the strategies that we offer investors,” says Mark Kamies, managing member and co-founder of AlphaCentric. “We are committed to offering products that provide diversification and utilise unique investment strategies, while attempting to mitigate risk. As we continue to grow, we will remain steadfast in our focus on distinct fund offerings and strong investment management teams.”
AlphaCentric, which launched in 2014, currently offers six unique alpha-driven strategies in
SharesPost, a provider of liquidity solutions to the private growth asset class, has launched the SharesPost Token Index, a tool designed to track the growth of the token market.
The Index focuses on a select group of tokens based on the ERC-20 protocol, and uses factors such as market capitalisation and trading history to assign a weight to each token based on price and circulating supply. As such, the Index is able to accurately reflect the market’s overall maturity in real-time on a daily basis while minimising liquidity risk and transaction costs.
SharesPost Founder and CEO Gregory Brogger
Prescient Investment Management has launched the Prescient China Equity Fund, which has been established as an Irish regulated UCITS with daily liquidity and seeded with USD100 million.
The fund uses a systematic, quantitative approach to seek long term capital growth by investing primarily in China A shares listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges by virtue of Prescient’s Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) status granted by the China Securities Regulatory Commission.
“Prescient has a successful five-year track record of investing in China in a UCITS compliant format. This latest fund reflects investor demand for mainland Chinese equity exposure, which
Investment research boutique Elston Consulting has launched the Elston Strategic Beta Dynamic Risk Parity Index, which provides a dynamically weighted multi-asset approach for achieving risk-based, rather than asset-based, diversification for UK investors.
The project has been developed in cooperation with Milliman Financial Risk Management.
The objective of the index is to provide a multi-asset strategy that is differentiated, dynamic and diversified.
Elston says the key difference to traditional multi-asset approaches is that the strategy is weighted by the equal contribution to overall risk by each asset class, rather than by asset weights alone. The weights are then dynamically adjusted as
Assets invested in ETFs and ETPs listed globally amounted to USD4.99 trillion at the end of Q2 2018, following net inflows of USD85.47 billion and market moves during the period while the global hedge fund industry saw assets rise to a record USD3.24 trillion, despite net outflows of USD3.0 billion over the quarter, buoyed by positive market moves.
That’s according to ETFGI’s Q2 2018 Global ETF and ETP industry landscape insights report and a report by Hedge Fund Research.
Total assets invested in the global ETF/ETP industry continues to extend their lead over assets invested in the global hedge fund industry,
