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Managed futures gained 0.19 per cent in February, according to the Barclay CTA Index compiled by BarclayHedge.
“Although commodity indexes gained nearly 3.5 per cent in February, the profits for CTAs came largely from the financial markets,” says Sol Waksman, founder and president of BarclayHedge. “US and Asian equity markets overcame Greek jitters early in February and rallied nicely through month-end.”
The Barclay BTOP50 Index, which monitors performance of the largest managed futures funds, outperformed all other sectors, gaining 0.72 per cent in February.
“The largest traders, based on liquidity considerations, tend to have higher percentage exposures to financial markets
Prime broker Direct Access Partners has formed a marketing practice.
The New York brokerage firm recruited a fundraising team from Channel Capital last month, adding four marketing professionals who have raised a combined USD1.5bn in recent years.
While other mini primes offer capital introduction, usually free of charge, Direct Access is thought to be the first to create a full-fledged marketing unit to help hedge fund clients raise capital. The firm will charge an undisclosed fee for the service.
The new team is led by Wall Street veteran George Lucaci (pictured), who joined Direct Access as a senior managing director.
The European Repo Council of the International Capital Market Association has released a survey which sets the baseline figure for the European repo market size at EUR5,582bn, representing an increase of 14.7 per cent on the figure of EUR4,868bn for the previous survey in June 2009.
This latest survey shows robust overall growth in volumes in the second half of 2009, which confirms the tentative signs of recovery seen in June 2009.
The data also demonstrates the resilience of the European repo market, which largely continued to function during the financial crisis of 2008-09.
ICMA says the repo market provided
EFX Prime Services, a division of First New York Securities, has appointed its hedge fund client service team.
The team is comprised of operations and trading experts from First New York Securities and new hires that complete the EFX Prime service offering.
Mario Maugeri has been named director of operations. He joined First New York in 1995 and oversees operations and manages relationships with all clearing firms.
Glen Mauriello is manager domestic operations. He joined First New York in 2007 and has 22 years’ experience most recently as director of clearing operations at LaBranche Financial Services.
Peter Lombardo, operations specialist,
Driven by the need to diversify in order to mitigate their counterparty risk and increase transparency, an ever-growing number of hedge funds of all sizes are leveraging multi-prime relationships to adapt and seek new ways to grow their businesses.
This is one of the findings of a study by Pershing, a BNY Mellon company, and the Aite Group, which examines the key role of prime brokers and the market trend of hedge fund managers implementing the multi-prime business model.
The study indicates that, as a result of major prime brokerage failures, counterparty risk has emerged as one of the major
A fall in the jobless claim figures for the UK have resulted in a strengthening of sterling, it has been claimed, which could be good news for hedge funds.
Eurex Clearing has launched a real-time risk data distribution service called Enhanced Risk Solution.
It is the first central counterparty worldwide to offer risk management and margining data in real-time to its trading and clearing members.
The Enhanced Risk Solution is available across all asset classes and products – including derivatives, cash equities, bonds and repo transactions – for all connected exchanges and trading venues where Eurex Clearing offers clearing services.
The new service is free of charge and will allow all members to optimise their intra-day risk monitoring, risk controlling and treasury management towards Eurex Clearing.
“Our Enhanced Risk
Broadcort, a clearing division of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, has expanded its clearing and execution business for institutional broker-dealers by attracting more than a dozen new clients in the second half of 2009, and six additional new clients already in 2010.
"With our open architecture, robust third-party connectivity, high capacity and outstanding service culture, we believe we are setting a new standard in the institutional clearing space," says Michael Bird, head of Broadcort. "We would like to thank all of our clients who entrust their business to us every day."
Broadcort operates with Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s execution
Hedge Funds posted a modest return of 0.17 per cent for January, below December’s monthly return of 0.88 per cent, according to the Credit Suisse/Tremont Broad Hedge Fund Index.
All hedge fund strategies except emerging markets, long/short equity, and managed futures posted positive performance for January.
Confirming that December closed on a strong note, the best performing hedge fund strategy was event driven: distressed securities (+2.02 per cent), while the worst performing strategy was managed futures at minus 3.81 per cent.
Monthly performance dispersion among Credit Suisse/Tremont hedge fund strategy indices in January dropped 168 basis points from December’s reading
Twin Capital Management has appointed Kevin S. Gahwyler as director of business development.
Gahwyler will lead the firm’s marketing and investor relations efforts.
“Mr. Gahwyler’s hire marks the first real institutional marketing effort of Twin in its long history,” says founder David J. Simon.
Prior to joining Twin, Gahwyler was the founder of KenCole Capital, an investment bank boutique specialising in hedge fund structures and marketing.
Prior to that Gahwyler served in several senior marketing roles, most recently at Pequot Capital Management as the product specialist and prior to that as the director of marketing at Sagamore Hill Capital Management.
