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MFS reached top spot in Scope’s large asset-manager ranking for the first time in the first quarter of 2019, while Lupus Alpha, a first-time entrant, went straight to number one in the small-manager ranking.
MFS Investment Management reached the number one spot for the first time in the large asset-manager category, which ranks managers with 25 or more rated funds. Just a year ago, the US fund manager was in 23rd place. Its leap to the top was driven by an improvement in the proportion of its funds with top ratings from 38 per cent in Q1 2018 to 63
Overall, there was a clear sense of optimism in the auditorium at this year’s AIF event. The feeling was that even if volatility spikes higher this year, there will still be new investment opportunities to explore, be they growth stocks in Asian frontier markets, trading different parts of the oil complex, or using alternative data sets to generate insights in global markets that managers may previously have overlooked.
In her concluding remarks, Amzallag said:
“It’s been wonderful to welcome some of the most prominent and influential hedge funds, investors and service providers in our industry and to hear about their incredible
One aspect of change that has started influence the way alternative fund managers think about their strategies is the increased focus on sustainable investing among institutional allocators. ESG considerations are becoming part of the manager selection process, as a way to determine what ESP principals are being applied, how this affects the investment process, and what tools, if any, can be used to benchmark performance.
Piet Klop is Senior Advisor Responsible Investment, PGGM, a leading Dutch pension fund service provider with approximately EUR211 billion in AUM. He believes there are several sides to the ESG debate.
“I like to separate
To a lot of investors looking for growth and yield opportunities, the prevailing perception with Asia Pacific markets is that they represent a high risk, compared to more developed western markets. This perception was challenged during a panel discussion entitled Asia’s game changers and strategic opportunities” chaired by Gary John-Baptiste, Chief Commercial Officer, Asia Pacific, ABN AMRO Clearing.
When asked “What percentage of your investments will be focused on Asia in 2019?”, two thirds of the audience voted it would be less than 20 per cent.
“There is an image problem I think,” said Tobias Hekster, co-CIO, True Partner Capital,
Understanding how the global macro picture might unfold this year, and on into 2020, plays a key role in how active managers seek out opportunities for their portfolios. If, as suggested, market neutral strategies (and other low directional beta strategies) are preferred by investors, where might these strategies find an edge?
Dr Anoosh Lachin, Portfolio Manager, Aspect Capital, runs a systematic macro strategy. Speaking on the How to invest globally, now panel, moderated by Professor Mary Pieterse-Bloem, Global Head Fixed Income, ABN AMRO, Lachlin shared what seemed to be a prevailing view at the forum; namely that central banks had
This year’s AIF Factor was won by Greenland Investment Management; a systematic strategy focusing on global commodity arbitrage opportunities.
The four other contenders included: Bainbridge Partners, a systematic equity market neutral strategy; Typhon Capital Management, whose Vulcan hedge fund trades market microstructure inefficiencies in metals; Walnut Algorithms, a machine-learning focused investment strategy, and Molinero Capital Management, a fundamental quant commodity programme.
Anant Jatia, Founder of Greenland Investment Management, founded India’s first onshore hedge fund, Forefront Capital Management, before setting up Greenland Investment Management five years ago.
Greenland’s second fund offering, Greenland Global Fund II, is a carve-out of its existing
Since the turn of the century, the price of oil has whipsawed significantly, falling 75 per cent between November 2014 and March 2016 alone. Over the last 20 years, the market has moved from Peak Oil to Peak Production of oil, to one of Peak Demand for oil.
Speaking about how he views oil price dynamics in conversation with Erik Norland, Senior Economist, CME, Doug King, Partner at RCMA Capital, a London-based commodity trading firm, said that with the shale oil revolution in the US, with technology improving annually, “there is enough oil and enough production capacity to sate the demand
One of the major trends to emerge in the global hedge fund industry in recent years has been the growing sophistication and proliferation of quantitative strategies, some of which are pushing the edge of what is possible with machine learning algorithms, in an attempt to uncover novel sources of alpha.
Machine learning strategies are developing rapidly thanks to improved computer processing power. To be effective, however, managers need to feed their models with good data sets.
Speaking on the panel A Data Future, moderated by Stewart Jardine, Director, Market Technology & Data Services, CME, Rani Piputri, Head of Automated Intelligence Investing,
The eighth edition of ABN AMRO Clearing’s Amsterdam Investor Forum had picked its moment well. Held on 19 and 20 March, it seemed appropriate that 10 days before the UK was officially set to leave the European Union, prevailing market uncertainty and what the direction of travel could be for global financial markets in 2019 helped to create the ideal backdrop against which to debate the key issues facing alternative fund managers.
In her opening address, Delphine Amzallag, Global Head of Prime Services at ABN AMRO, said that looking back to 2018, after multiple years of steady growth, “it was clearly a tumultuous year
CME Group has launched ENSO Data Insights, a community benchmarking tool which leverages ENSO’s alternative data set to help customers make more informed investment decisions.
ENSO Data Insights provides hedge funds, asset managers and banks with access to a diverse pool of global multi-asset class securities to help them compare best execution financing rates, trend analysis for long and short position sector changes, sector breakdown, top position movers, crowdedness scoring, and the most active stock borrow rate changes as it relates to the ENSO Rate. The tool helps clients evaluate how market dynamics are driving costs and demands to borrow stock, optimise counterparty management and seize alpha-generating opportunities.
