Funds
Calastone, the global funds transaction network, has expanded into the Nordic market with the addition of Swedish firm Wassum Securities to its trading network. Wassmum is now live and routing orders.
Wassum caters for institutional investors, unit linked companies, pension funds, family offices, foundations and fund managers. Working with Calastone will help further strengthen their trading processes in a secure, transparent and cost effective way.
Jon Willis, Chief Commercial Officer at Calastone, says: “Calastone is committed to helping the funds industry realise the benefits of risk and cost reduction by offering an interoperable and fully automated approach to
January has shown to the world that seismic activities are on the rise. In fact, when policy shifts increase in frequency the likelihood of policy mistakes rises with it. In 2015, Fasanara Capital expects global markets to be erratic, volatile and characterised by surprising policy shifts.
Today global markets carry visible risks as well as opportunities which are characterised by very substantial upside. As a result, Fasanara does not believe that a defensive portfolio behaviour will pay off in the current environment as safe spots are inexistent. On such basis, the firm has elected to temporarily stomach more portfolio volatility
Multi-class asset manager La Française has signed a strategic partnership – pending regulatory approval – with Alger Management (Alger).
La Française will take a 49.9% interest in Alger, an affiliate of Fred Alger Management, a US asset management firm. Two executives of La Française will sit on the newly appointed five member Board of Alger.
This alliance offers a unique opportunity to create synergies in distribution, market development, and product diversification. La Française, through its European network and with the support of its majority shareholder, Credit Mutuel Nord Europe, will provide distribution capabilities and acceleration capital, and Fred Alger
Hedge funds started the year slightly down, but managed to out-perform the S&P 500 for the month of January, according to eVestment’s January 2015 Hedge Fund Performance Report.
While aggregate hedge fund performance was down slightly at -0.03%, hedge funds managed to beat the S&P 500 in January by 297 basis points, the most since January 2014.
Managed futures funds gained 3.04% in January and have returned 9.07% in the past six months.
Large managed futures funds – those with AUM above USD1 billion – continued to perform strongly with returns of nearly 6% in January and more than 16%
The vote by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on 27 November 2014 to not reduce oil production levels was widely publicized and had a significant effect on managed futures and CTAs throughout Q4 2014, particularly on funds with a focus on trading oil. Throughout this period, the Brent Crude Oil price index fell by nearly 40%, from $94.80 at the close of September to $57.55 on 31 December. It is clear that the volatility of this commodity provided opportunities for funds implementing short strategies but exposed those unable to navigate the market.
As the chart below illustrates,
Lionpoint Group has launched a new service to help alternative investments clients address manager and investor requirements for greater transparency of underlying portfolio companies and investment holdings.
Primary services include process optimisation, operational efficiency improvements and the implementation of enabling technologies to support the collection, validation, normalisation, performance reporting and analytics associated with underlying holdings in Private Capital, with a focus on Private Equity, Real Estate and Infrastructure. Offerings also include support with risk and compliance monitoring as well as Portfolio Company and underlying investment valuations.
While remaining product agnostic, the Lionpoint Group team has solution expertise with products including AssetEye,
Digital Vega, provider of the award-winning Medusa multi-dealer FX Option platform, saw year-on-year growth of over 160% in 2014 with daily trading volumes breaking all previous records.
Mark Suter, Executive Chairman, says: “We were really pleased with last year’s progress and we remain very optimistic for 2015 given the continued pick up in volumes; we have always been at the forefront of what was a fledgling market, and based on last year’s strong performance, we have proven the model conclusively and have achieved critical mass both in terms of available liquidity and client adoption. We feel that this is further
Morgan Stanley has launched a new fund, the MS Tremblant Long/Short Equity UCITS Fund under its FundLogic Alternatives Plc umbrella.
The fund provides exposure to Tremblant’s Long/Short Equity Strategy (the Strategy), which employs a fundamental and research driven approach. The Strategy aims to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns by identifying potential investments trading at material dislocation from fair value across sectors and regions. The FundLogic Alternatives Platform currently has more than USD2.4bn in assets under management, as of 31 December 2014, and this latest addition expands Morgan Stanley’s offering of Long/Short Equity strategies.
“We are delighted to announce the launch of
After a strong start to the year, hedge funds paused for breath in early February, with the Lyxor Hedge Fund index falling 0.4% for the week. Trend reversals in oil prices (up 15% during the period) and in the USD (dollar index down 0.5%) were the principal causes. Almost all strategies ended the week in negative territory. But while many CTA and commodity managers were still short energy and subsequently witnessed losses, some Global Macro managers and shorter-term CTAs were on the long side of the spectrum (see page 3).
Four out of seven of IndexIQ’s IQ Hedge family of investable hedge fund replication and alternative beta indexes recorded positive performance in January.
The IQ Hedge Fixed Income Arbitrage Beta Index led the way with a return of 1.28% followed by the IQ Hedge Long/Short Beta Index (0.60%) and the IQ Hedge Global Macro Beta Index (0.28%). The other indexes to end the month in positive territory was the IQ Hedge Composite Beta Index with an increase of 0.05%.
The IQ Hedge Emerging Markets Beta Index was the month’s biggest loser, down 1.23%, while the IQ Hedge Event-Driven Beta Index
