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In addition to buying copper and oil futures, buying up the shares of mining and oil exploration companies could be a winning strategy over the next decade, according to Steve Shafer (pictured), Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager of Covenant Global Investors.
Commodity prices have boomed as part of a commodity super cycle that began in earnest around 2003, but the shares of companies that produce commodities have lagged behind. Mr. Shafer thinks this could soon change as yield-hungry investors widen their focus to include stocks in undervalued (by historic standards) material and commodities production companies, not just the commodities
PENSCO Trust has launched an education initiative to help investors prevent fraud.
“PENSCO is committed to helping investors stop fraud before it happens,” says PENSCO CEO Kelly Rodriques. “Investing in alternative assets in tax-advantaged accounts is a terrific way to build wealth, but in the current economy, fraudsters may pose a threat to unsuspecting investors. PENSCO’s fraud prevention efforts are designed to educate investors and thwart criminals.”
PENSCO today also publicly endorsed the anti-fraud efforts of the Retirement Industry Trade Association (RITA), which is comprised of the nation’s largest independent custodians in the retirement industry. RITA’s new fraud prevention initiatives
Hedge funds opened 2012 by posting broad-based gains in January, with the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index gaining 2.63 per cent, the second highest monthly performance figure since December 2010, according to data released today by HFR.
Equity Hedge strategies performed the strongest in January, with the HFRI Equity Hedge Index gaining 3.84 per cent, led by Fundamental Growth, Value and Energy/Basic Materials sub-strategies. Event Driven and Relative Value Arbitrage strategies posted gains of 2.4 per cent and 2.3 per cent, respectively, with contributions from ED: Special Situations and Activist funds, as well as RV: Yield Alternative and Convertible Arbitrage
Armstrong Investment Managers has invested into the newly launched sterling share class of the Swiss & Global JB Absolute Return Europe Equity Fund, managed by Andy Kastner, through its flagship IM Distinction Diversified Real Return Fund.
The Julius Baer Absolute Return Europe Equity Fund has delivered strong performance since it was launched at the end of September 2010. The fund has generated a return since inception of +9.9% (as of 31 December 2011) outperforming its benchmark while harnessing lower volatility compared to European markets.
The fund pursues a market-neutral long-short pair-trading strategy. Using a multi-tier process, the team led by
Lou Sala, chief executive of the Capital Markets practice at WTP Advisors, says that in the wake of the Madoff scandal, due diligence processes that were once little more than box-ticking exercises have become a searching and in some respects painful examination for hedge fund managers.
First, my apologies to those who saw the headline and thought that this would be a scintillating discussion piece detailing my insight into the hot hedge fund strategies and the harnessing of alpha. It’s not. What I am presenting here is a view of the other side of investing – the unglamorous, roll-up-your-sleeves world
LCH.Clearnet Limited’s interest rate swap (IRS) clearing service, SwapClear, cleared USD34 billion in total notional client business in January across seven of the 17 currencies currently available.
These volumes bring the total client notional outstanding to USD288 billion. During this period, SwapClear also cleared USD28 trillion of total notional business.
An advocate of compression, SwapClear tore up USD10.8 trillion of cleared transactions in January through multilateral trade compression, taking its overall total compressed trades to USD99 trillion in USD, EUR, GBP and JPY cleared IRS.
“The continued growth in client volume before any mandate has been enacted confirms the buy-side’s
Hedge funds redeemed an estimated USD5.2 billion in December 2011 and underperformed the S&P 500 for the year, according to figures released gy BarclayHedge and TrimTabs Investment Research. Industry assets fell to USD1.64 trillion, down 7.7% for 2011, and hit their lowest level since February 2010.
“The Barclay Hedge Fund Index fell 0.4% in December after decreasing 1.4% in November,” says Sol Waksman (pictured), founder and President of BarclayHedge. “From May 2011 onward, hedge fund performance was negative in every month except October.”
“Hedge funds underperformed the S&P 500 last year, falling 5.5% compared to a flat return for the
At last month’s Lyxor 4th Annual Hedge Fund Conference in Paris, an interesting paper dealing with the way that market exchanges operate in single and fragmented markets and the social consequences that investing in speed has on investors, was presented by Emiliano Pagnotta (pictured). The paper, “Competing on Speed”, was written by Pagnotta and Thomas Philippon, both of NYU Stern School of Business.
The basic premise of the paper is that everything else constant, trading speed is desirable for everyone: all investors are happier if they can execute trades faster. Demand, however, is heterogeneous. Retail investors are less concerned with
GlobeOp Financial Services has appointed Tim Ridley to its Cayman Islands subsidiary board. Ridley, the former chairman of the Cayman Island Monetary Authority (CIMA) and a former senior partner of Maples and Calder, was appointed following the recent resignation of Gary Linford.
“Demand for greater hedge fund transparency and governance is increasing,” says Vernon Barback (pictured), GlobeOp president and chief operating officer. “Tim Ridley’s legal, financial and regulatory expertise will be a benefit to GlobeOp and its clients. We look forward to his contributions as we focus on independent valuation, regulatory and board reporting. I would also like to thank
Asian hedge funds outperformed volatile regional equity markets in 2011, marking the second consecutive year of such outperformance, according to data released by HFR (Hedge Fund Research).
In a year marked by a difficult cycle of navigating steep equity market declines in Japan and Emerging Asia, the benchmark HFRX Asia with Japan Index posted a narrow gain of 0.4 per cent in 4Q11 to end 2011 with a decline of 5.2 per cent, mirroring the performance of the broad-based HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index and topping the Nikkei 225 and the Shanghai Composite Index by 1,200 and nearly 1,700 basis
