Funds
Seed CX has constructed the first industrial hemp derivative contracts, which will be traded on its platform, subject to regulatory approval by the CFTC.
Edward Woodford, CEO at Seed, says: “We are focused on risk mitigation tools for the industry including crop insurance and derivatives hedging capabilities. One of the key steps to this process is helping to create an active cash market and generate economic research.”
The contracts have been developed in conjunction with research conducted at Harvard Law School, assisted by faculty at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
Woodford says: “We are excited to have developed
A great number of the world's more than 13,000 alternative investment funds suffer from "Fund Manager's Disease," which significantly prevents those funds from increasing assets under management (AUM).
That’s according to Ole Rollag, managing principal of Murano Systems who, in his keynote presentation at the Amsterdam Investor Forum hosted by ABN Amro Bank, said that and on an industry-wide basis, the ‘disease’ serves to limit the adoption of alternative asset classes by institutional investors.
At a by-invitation-only session for global fund managers held at ABN AMRO Bank's headquarters in The Netherlands, Rollag noted that: "Because a fund's Chief Investment
Hedge funds returned -2.60 per cent in January as the asset class recorded its worst monthly performance since 2012, with macro hedge funds the only top-level strategy to post positive returns at 0.98 per cent, according to Preqin.
In a month when leading equity indices posted significant losses — the S&P 500 posted -5.07 per cent and MSCI World posted -6.05 per cent — hedge funds pursuing equity strategies returned -4.28 per cent.
By contrast, CTAs started 2016 with returns of 1.38 per cent, their best monthly performance since they made gains of 3.75 per cent in January 2015.
SimCorp has released version 5.9 of SimCorp Dimension, the first of two annual releases. Along with numerous other modules, new features, and further integration across the entire value chain, the release introduces new advanced additions to SimCorp’s Asset Manager.
The analytics functionality in the Asset Manager is now enriched with accounting analytics and tax lots enabling portfolio managers to measure and analyse data to better advise their clients on the accounting and tax implications of their investment decisions. The accounting analytics are particularly valuable to the insurance industry, and the tax lot visibility is particularly beneficial in countries such as
Unigestion has hired a fund investment team from the London-based hedge fund group Cube Capital. As part of the deal, Unigestion has acquired the long/short fund managed by the team which identifies equity and credit opportunities linked to market dislocations.
The investment strategy of the fund will remain unchanged under the continued management of the team, which has achieved, as at the end of December 2015, an annualised return of 13.1 per cent with annualised volatility of 8.5 per cent since inception in May 2009. The team joining Unigestion to run the strategy is made up of Nicholas Linnane, Investment
Emerging markets asset management firm The Rohatyn Group (TRG) has appointed Christopher Seaver as a Partner. Seaver is a 24-year veteran in the industry with extensive experience in Asia-Pacific markets.
Based in TRG’s Hong Kong office, Seaver will be responsible for oversight of the firm’s regional initiatives in Asia including new business development and management of existing and new strategic partnerships. He will also serve on TRG’s Executive Committee.
Nicolas Rohatyn, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of TRG, says: “The addition of Chris to our leadership team reflects TRG’s continued enthusiasm for the dynamism of Asia’s diverse
Renewed selling pressure has translated into sharp losses for risk assets lately, with the European banking sector at the forefront of the selloff, according to the latest Hedge Fund Brief from Lyxor.
As usual in such episodes, equities, commodities and high yield credit were down, while “core” sovereign bonds posted gains.
Hedge funds have been pretty resilient in such adverse market conditions. As discussed in previous editions of this report, they have maintained a defensive allocation that proved highly supportive. The Lyxor hedge fund index was down 2 per cent during the period under review (2-9 Feb), while the
Cybersecurity specialist Cynet has secured a USD7 million investment from Lazarus, a US-based hedge fund.
Cynet was founded in 2015 by Eyal Gruner, Idan Amir, and Boaz Zilber, recognised leaders in Israel’s flourishing cybersecurity industry. Since its launch last year, Cynet has already experienced rapid growth with a global client base that includes dozens of large-scale enterprises in finance, healthcare, government, retail, and industrial sectors among others.
“We believe Cynet could be the next cybersecurity giant to come out of Israel,” says Brian Abrams, partner at Lazarus. “With their comprehensive solution and rapid proof-of-concept deployments, Cynet is going head-to-head
Powernext and the clearing house European Commodity Clearing (ECC) are to introduce a series of new measures throughout 2016 in order to further accelerate the positive development of the TTF futures market.
In 2015, the volumes traded on the TTF derivatives market via the PEGAS platform operated by Powernext increased to 429 TWh compared to 150 TWh in 2014. In addition, PEGAS set a new record with more than 100 TWh being traded in one month in January 2016.
Egbert Laege, CEO of Powernext, comments: “These new TTF initiatives will benefit our entire customer base and also attract further
US Listed Options volumes surged in January, while average bid/ask size drops to lowest in two years, according to the January 2016 TABB Options LiquidityMatrix (OLM).
“January’s stock-market pain was the options market’s gain, with US listed options volumes rising to its highest monthly reading since August,” says TABB Group options research analyst Callie Bost, who manages the OLM.
January’s resurgence of violent market swings were a boon to US listed options trading. Volume last month totalled 364.4 million contracts, 7.6 per cent higher than December’s total and 3.2 per cent higher than the year-ago January.

The S&P 500
