Funds
The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index was flat-to-marginally positive at 0.05 per cent during August, trailing the MSCI AC World Index (Local) which gained 1.06 per cent over the month.
The Eurekahedge North American Hedge Fund Index maintained its lead gaining 0.84 per cent in August, with underlying long/short equities focused managers up 1.57 per cent during the month. European fund managers posted losses in August of 0.28 per cent, bringing their year-to-date gains down to 0.41 per cent. Rising tensions between the US and China over trade continued to weigh on market sentiment, with Asian hedge fund managers posting their
Hedge funds gained 0.42 per cent in August according to the Barclay Hedge Fund Index compiled by BarclayHedge, versus a 3.26 per cent increase in the S&P 500 Total Return Index.
Year to date, the Barclay Hedge Fund Index is up 1.55 per cent, while the S&P has gained 9.94 per cent.
“New all-time highs for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq coupled with a rally in US Treasuries helped set the stage for another profitable month for hedge funds,” says Sol Waksman, founder and president of BarclayHedge.
Overall, 15 of Barclay’s 17 hedge fund indices gained
Beekeeper, a communication and operations platform for frontline workers, has raised an additional USD13 million as a part of its Series A extension round.
Atomico and Keen Venture Partners led the round with a diverse group of strategic investors including Samsung NEXT, Edenred Capital Partners (ECP), and Swiss Post who have joined Beekeeper’s mission to connect the nearly two billion non-desk workers who have been forgotten when it comes to digitalisation within companies. All existing key investors, including FYRFLY Venture Partners and investiere.ch, also participated in the round.
Aligning employees without email addresses or corporate devices with the entire
Ibis Capital, profiled in AlphaQ, a specialist education technology alternative investment manager, is to launch the world’s first education technology special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.
The new company will be called EdTechX Holdings and will list on Nasdaq, according to a regulatory filing.
ExTechX Holdings intends to build a next generation education platform through the targeted acquisition, consolidation and development of established education, training and education technology businesses that are early adopters of technology and led by proven management teams.
IBIS Capital and Azimut Enterprises, a European independent asset management company with over USD61 billion of assets
The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Index, which provides a representative baseline for how the broad liquid alternative investment category performs, returned 0.17 per cent in August, underperforming the 0.45 per cent monthly return of the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index.
The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Index family is a joint offering between Wilshire Funds Management, the global investment management business unit of Wilshire Associates Incorporated, and Wilshire Analytics, creator of the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index.
“Markets posted mixed performance in August as investors favoured US markets, while emerging markets experienced another challenging month,” says Jason Schwarz (pictured), President of Wilshire
Hedge funds posted gains in August as US equities and the dollar expanded their respective divergence with non-US assets, Emerging Markets currencies extended losses, and the US technology sector extended record gains.
The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index (FWC) gained 0.7 per cent for the month as all main strategies advanced, bringing the YTD 2018 return of the FWC to +2.0 per cent, as reported today by HFR, the established global leader in the indexation, analysis and research of the global hedge fund industry. The HFRI Fund of Funds (Total) Index returned +1.1 per cent for the month, topping the
The International Stock Exchange (TISE) has become home to what it believes to be the first ever listing on a regulated exchange of notes digitised on a blockchain.
Dom Re IC Limited has issued notes digitised on a private blockchain. Referred to as ‘ILSBlockchain’, the mechanism replaces the role of a traditional settlement system for the note issue.
Dom Re is a cell of Solidum Re (Guernsey) ICC Limited, which itself is a wholly owned subsidiary of Insurance Linked Securities (ILS) manager Solidum Partners AG.
Now USD15 million Principal-at-Risk Participating Notes due 2024 issued by Dom Re have
Low beta strategies outperformed in the hedge fund space last week. Merger arbitrage, which structurally has a low beta versus equity markets, was the sole strategy in positive territory, according to the latest Weekly Brief from Lyxor’s Cross Asset Research team.
Lyxor writes: “Positive contributors to performance include the Aetna vs CVS deal whose deal spread tightened on the back of media reports suggesting the DoJ may approve the deal within the next few weeks. The DoJ is also reportedly close to approving Cigna’s acquisition of Express Scripts, a significant deal in merger arbitrage portfolios. Then, the Sky vs Comcast
Powernext has been reappointed as the operator of the national registry for guarantees of origin in France for electricity produced from renewable sources or via co-generation.
In addition, the mandate of Powernext has been extended to include the organisation of auctions for guarantees of origin issued for generation facilities benefitting from state subsidies. This appointment, as announced by the Ministry for an Ecological and Solidary Transition via a decree dated 24 August 2018, will enter into force on 1 January 2019 for a period of five years.
As implemented in accordance with the European directive 2009/28/EC, the guarantees of
The summer saw the launch of a new investment platform, AtomInvest, which is designed to democratise access to alternative investment funds across private equity, venture capital and hedge funds.
Founder and CEO of AtomInvest Hemal Mehta explains that he has a background in financial services and private equity and had increasingly realised that while these funds have consistently delivered high returns to investors of around 10 to 25 per cent over the last half century, they were pretty much designed for large institutional investors.
“Alternative investments are great manufacturers of returns in up markets and down markets,” he says. “However,
