Funds
Fund manager Peter Lucey is planning to launch a new risk mitigation fund, Bull & Bear, on 1 October.
Although only 30, Lucey (pictured), already has nearly a decade of fund management experience. After building his previous fund, Arsenal Advisors from the ground up, and a stint at Morgan Stanley, his new offering is a risk mitigation fund, which he says is ‘uncorrelated to the overall economy, and seeks to drive a conservative return in both up and down markets’.
The new fund is designed to offer investors risk/return characteristics that are different from traditional long-only equity or fixed
Optimal Asset Management has launched a direct indexing service for institutional investors and investment advisors. The indices available for direct indexing are S&P Dow Jones Indices’ flagship S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, S&P SmallCap 600 and select factor indices.
Since launching in 2012, Optimal Asset Management has emerged as a leader in the democratisation of investment technology and practice. Adding direct indexing services through Factor Allocator, a comprehensive platform which was introduced in 2017, is Optimal Asset Management’s latest phase in delivering institutional grade solutions to pension funds, family offices and investment advisors to whom such solutions were previously out
Hedge funds are up 0.43 per cent so far in 2018, their weakest performance on record since 2008 when they declined 0.23 per cent in the seven months up to July, according to the August 2018 Eurekahedge report.
Almost 49 per cent of managers are in the green for the year with roughly 13 per cent of these managers posting double digit gains as tracked in the Eurekahedge Global Hedge Funds Database.
Total assets under management have increased by USD6.8 billion as of July 2018 year-to-date, down from USD126.7 billion over the same period last year as performance driven
Redemptions from hedge funds hit a 20-month high in June, according to the Barclay Fund Flow Indicator, as the financial markets weighed the risks of trade disputes and rising interest rates. Hedge fund industry assets remained at an all-time high of USD3.0 trillion.
Data drawn from more than 5,000 hedge funds in the BarclayHedge database estimated that the hedge fund industry (excluding CTAs) gave up USD8.9 billion (-0.3 per cent of assets) in June, reversing inflows of USD4.0 billion (0.1 per cent of assets) the month before. June marked the largest outflow since October 2016, according to the Barclay Fund
TransFICC, a specialist provider of low-latency connectivity for Fixed Income and Derivatives Markets, has secured a strategic investment from Citi.
Citi joins existing shareholders, Illuminate Financial, Main Incubator (part of Commerzbank) and The FinLab.
TransFICC resolves the issue of market fragmentation by providing banks and asset managers with a unified low-latency, robust and scalable API. TransFICC enables financial institutions to access their required eTrading venues, while streamlining technology requirements and reducing operational costs.
In addition, TransFICC has joined Citi’s Innovation Lab in London, the first external company to do so. Launched in February 2018, the London Innovation Lab
Link Asset Services, part of Link Group, a provider of financial administration services, has made a strategic investment in Leveris Limited (Leveris).
Leveris is a financial technology company headquartered in Ireland with core expertise in banking and financial services. Leveris has developed a next-generation, modular, end-to-end banking platform that facilitates lending, deposit taking, card issuance and digital channel design. Its open architecture enables seamless integration with third parties through a combination of functionality, creating unique solutions for clients.
Strategically for Link Group, the Leveris platform will provide a modern and easily adaptable platform to expand the addressable market of
BlackRock has expanded its Global Bond Product Suite with the launch of the BlackRock Global Funds (BGF) Global Bond Income Fund (the Fund).
The Fund forms part of the firm’s Multi-Sector Fixed Income platform, which includes aggregate, government, corporate and flexible bond strategies. The Fund aims to deliver an attractive level of current income by investing across global fixed income markets in a diversified and risk-aware fashion and seeks to achieve growth by capturing strong performance across the credit cycle.
The Fund is managed by Rick Rieder (pictured), BlackRock’s Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income, in
Jim Wright, manager of the LF Miton Global Infrastructure Income Fund, explains why an improving environment for Canadian energy stocks has prompted him to increase allocation from 15.2 per cent at the end of March 2018 to 17.4 per cent…
After a period of stagnation, we see significant value opportunities emerging in the Canadian infrastructure sector.
We expect strong growth in oil and gas production over the coming years, based on abundant resources and more effective and efficient extraction. Demand for oil and gas for domestic consumption, from the USA and, increasingly, for overseas export, is likely to continue
Yewno, a provider of Artificial Intelligence solutions in the financial sector, has partnered with STOXX to launch the iSTOXX Yewno Developed Markets Blockchain Index.
This is the second index based on Yewno’s unique algorithm launched by STOXX, following the STOXX AI Global Artificial Intelligence Index introduced January this year. This new Index leverages Yewno’s intelligent framework and extracts a portfolio of companies from a wide range of industries that are highly exposed in the development of technologies related to blockchain. These companies are therefore considered to be well-positioned to benefit from the increased adoption of blockchain.
The iSTOXX Yewno
Exchange Data International (EDI), a provider of global security corporate actions, pricing and reference data, has partnered with Crux, a data engineering and information supply chain operator.
Crux is making data delightful, transforming the information supply chain by helping businesses connect with the data they need, when and how they need it. Their cloud-based technology solution connects data suppliers with customers – data users.
Jonathan Bloch (pictured), CEO of EDI, says: “We see the increasing importance of intermediary platforms which link consumers to manufacturers of data. Crux enables us to reach a market with which we normally do not interact namely buy
