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Hedge funds finished November in positive territory as global stock markets resumed their upward trend, according to a report by Lipper.
The Lipper Hedge Fund Composite Index was up 0.90 per cent in the month of its launch.
Equity hedge and directional strategies outperformed credit-focused and relative value managers for the month.
The best performing strategy for November was managed futures, posting a solid return of 2.45 per cent month on month, followed by option arbitrage (+1.42 per cent) and long bias (+1.24 per cent).
Trend followers were able to regain momentum on bullish trends in the stock markets and
State Street has been selected by Illinois-based Calamos Investments to provide custody, fund administration and securities lending services to Calamos’ collective fund structures.
The funds include open and closed end mutual funds, Dublin Ucits and private funds exceeding USD21bn in assets.
With this consolidation, State Street now provides full back-office services for all of Calamos’ collective fund structures.
“By further consolidating our operations with State Street, it provided us with a seamless model which has resulted in additional efficiencies in our processes, enabling us to better serve our clients,” says Nimish Bhatt, senior vice president of Calamos Advisors and chief
The City of New Haven’s Employee Retirement Fund has invested USD8m in IndexIQ’s multi-strategy hedge fund replication separately managed account vehicle.
The IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy SMA is designed to be liquid, transparent and low cost.
This allocation represents the first time the City of New Haven’s Employee Retirement Fund has invested in a hedge fund-like strategy.
The IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy SMA seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the performance of the IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy SMA Index. The index attempts to replicate the risk-adjusted return characteristics of the collective hedge funds using multiple hedge fund investment styles, including long/short equity,
Alternative investment firm NIR Group has appointed Robert M. Cohen as managing director.
Based in the firm’s Roslyn, New York, headquarters, Cohen is responsible for overseeing operations and business development.
"Bobby has a proven track-record in managing and building a successful firm in the financial services sector," says Corey Ribotsky, managing member and head portfolio manager. "We are confident that he will add significant value to us as we continue to build our operation."
For 15 years Cohen was founder and president of Robert M. Cohen, a full service brokerage firm specialising in investment banking, research and market making. Most
The Hennessee Group, an adviser to hedge fund investors, predicted silver would outperform gold in early 2009 and advised clients to accumulate positions in the precious metal as it appeared under-priced relative to gold.
Charles Gradante, co-founder of the Hennessee Group, says: “Despite the gains in 2009, we continue to believe both gold and silver serve as safe haven investments, particularly as a hedge against the longer-term risk of hyper-inflation.
“And while the gold to silver ratio has normalized in recent months, we still expect silver to outperform gold going forward, especially if we see further advances in industrial demand
Execution LLC, an agency-only broker, has launched an options trading platform.
The new offering is led by John Margolis who joined Execution in May 2009 from Thomson Financial where he had a 20-year career in technology and trading.
The new options group will offer smart routing, order execution, liquidity sourcing, and complex option execution strategies, including a low cost buy-side direct market access offering.
As head of the options capability, Margolis will focus on building out the platform in the US to deliver offerings to clients.
“We are continuing to build out our trading capabilities and the launch
DoubleLine, an advisory firm recently formed by Jeffrey Gundlach and Philip Barach, has established a strategic relationship with Oaktree Capital Management whereby Oaktree will help DoubleLine establish its own operational infrastructure.
In addition, Oaktree will receive a minority equity position in DoubleLine.
The investment team supporting Gundlach, former chief investment officer of The TCW Group, and Barach, former group managing director of the TCW Mortgage-Backed Securities Group, includes more than 30 former members of their previous team at TCW. DoubleLine expects this number to grow.
"Our agreement with Oaktree, one of the world’s leading investment advisory firms, will provide DoubleLine
Marcum has appointed Karan Sampson to the firm’s alternative investment group as the director of business development.
She will be working with members of the group to help them expand their practice and build their client base.
“We’re very excited to have Karan join our team,” says Beth Wiener, partner-in-charge of the alternative investment group at Marcum. “Karan’s background in sales and marketing for the investment industry combined with her in-depth knowledge of alternative investment strategies will be a tremendous asset to our group and complement our strong commitment to offer a high-level of client service.”
Sampson has worked in
NYSE Liffe, the European derivatives business of NYSE Euronext, has launched a standard cash-settled futures contract based on the CAC 40 Dividend Index.
The move follows the launch of the exchange’s FTSE 100 Dividend Index futures contract in May this year.
The CAC 40 Dividend Index represents the cumulative value of ordinary gross dividends declared by the individual constituents of the CAC 40 Index over a one-year period. The value of the dividend index is expressed in terms of index points.
Anne Gaignard (pictured), head of equity derivatives business development at NYSE Liffe in Paris, says: “In the last few
Standard Life Investments has made its global absolute returns strategies solution available to institutional and wholesale investors in Australia.
The GARS Australian Trust has already secured around AUS75m from a prominent institutional investor.
Standard Life Investments’ GARS solution has already proved popular with UK and international investors. It has delivered gross annualised returns of 8.7 per cent over the last three years with a volatility level of 7.4 per cent. Over the same period, the MSCI Index returned 0.9 per cent with volatility of 19.0 per cent.
James Cooper, country head – Australia, Standard Life Investments (Asia), says: “We
