Each business day HedgeCo.Net keeps you informed with the top hedge fund industry news, opinion and insight from around the globe. From the latest hedge fund launches, to the impact of regulation, competition, and investor activism - we track the topics and people that make a difference to you.
Seeking Alpha – If someone was asked to name a fund in the global macro game, undoubtedly Tudor Investment Corp or Moore Capital Management would be among the most frequent responses. The global macro strategy has fared well in the world of hedge funds. Paul Tudor Jones’ Tudor Investment Corp has earned an annualized return of greater than 20% over the span of two decades.
Louis Bacon’s of Moore Capital Management shares the same accolade. And, while they are both down this year, they have fared much better relative to many of their peers and the market indexes in general. Tudor’s flagship fund finds itself -5% for the year, while Moore was -2.9% year-to-date through November as we noted in our November hedge fund performance update.
But, in a never-ending quest for outperformance, Tudor and Bacon want more. And, in order to accomplish that, they see it fit to return to their roots.
Seeking Alpha – With the news getting worse and worse for the hedgies (e.g. Fortress, Thomas Lee, D. E. Shaw), it’s time for a rethink on hedge funds.
For hedge fund investors: You probably went into them believing that they were uncorrelated absolute return vehicles, or pure alpha. Isn’t it funny how correlations all go to 1 in times of crisis? Maybe it’s time to return to your roots and understand the role of alternative investments in your portfolio.
For hedge fund managers: The really successful ones began fifteen or twenty years ago as small, nimble, guerilla investors. Somewhere along the way the guerillas came down from the hills, got big and became the government. Maybe it’s time to return to the hills again.
Investors thought hedge funds were the panacea when the hedgies showed positive returns in the post-Tech bubble crash. Ultimi Barbarorum writes:
Last time we had a bear market, hedge fund fortunes were made. Andor Capital, William von Meuffling, Crispin Odey, Chris Hohn, even Jim Cramer when he was trading, all made out like bandits producing 20-50% returns on the short side in 2000-2002, many after having doubled their money by being long in 1999.
Seeking Alpha – "In my view they didn’t do what they set out to do … which was to hedge. I saw a few hedge funds that did much worse than my long-only fund, which is rather ironic," [Veritas Asset Management manager Ezra Sun] said.
The losses have disappointed many investors who had expected positive returns in all market conditions, and hefty withdrawals of somewhere between a fifth and a third of the industry are widely expected at the end of the year. There was the risk people could perceive hedge funds as a "rip-off" because they had been charging high rates on the implicit promise they could deliver absolute returns, but did not deliver when global markets collapsed.
Seeking Alpha – This is the Third Quarter 2008 edition of our ongoing hedge fund tracking series. We’ve already covered Whitney Tilson’s T2 Partners, Peter Thiel’s Clarium Capital, Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square, and Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital. Next up, we have Maverick Capital. Lee Ainslie started Maverick Capital back in 1993 with $38 million. Nowadays, the fund is worth $10 billion. Ainslie, like many of the other fund managers we’ve profiled, has a background rooted in learning from legendary great Julian Robertson at Tiger Management.
These protégés (nicknamed ‘Tiger Cubs’) learned from the best and have had great success running their own funds. Some contacts over at Maverick have explained that its strategy is straight up stock picking, both long and short. The company made it clear though, that the company does not employ pairs trades, although, some of its long/short setups might be in the same sector.
Seeking Alpha – I’m lucky to count among my friends Charlie Michaels, owner of hedge fund company Sierra Global and portfolio manager of the Sierra Europe Fund. Charlie is among the few hedge fund managers sitting on a gain so far this year.
According to the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index managed by Hedge Fund Research, Inc. in Chicago, the average hedge fund dropped 5.4% last month and is down 15.5% so far this year. The industry has been losing for five months in a row, which is the longest down streak since the index began in 1990.
Charlie and his team at Sierra Global, meanwhile, gained 0.2% in September, 3.0% last month, and are up 8.6% so far this year. The only year the Sierra Europe Fund ended down was 2002, when it lost 12.3%. The FTSE 100 lost 25% that year and the DAX 42%, so even Sierra’s loss that year can be chalked up as a relative victory. All of which is to say that it’s worth paying attention to Charlie when it comes to stocks.
Seeking Alpha – It’s a tough world out there – I saw in the Wall Street Journal the average hedge fund lost 18% in October. Considering what their mandate is i.e. hedge – that is amazing. September was awful as well. We see stories of hedge funds that are performing well (in this market losing 10% in a year is "great") and still facing redemptions because their investors need the cash…. as Ross Perot famously said… there is a "giant sucking sound" in our capital markets.
In a world hard up for cash, even hedge-fund winners can wind up losers. Such is the fate of major credit fund Blue Mountain Capital Management, whose investors have begun yanking investments despite the fund’s performance this year, a modest 2.4% loss, compared with an average 20% loss across all funds. Blue Mountain is a major player in the credit markets, with assets of $5.5 billion invested in bank loans, bonds and credit-default swaps. Its primary fund, the $3.1 billion Credit Alternatives Fund, had lost 2.4% this year through Friday.
Performance was largely beside the point for many Blue Mountain investors, who need access to cash. Theperverse effect is that some investors have begun raiding their better-performing investments, giving the laggards a chance to recover.
Seeking Alpha – Risk management Rule No.1: if it can happen then it will happen. Hope for the best but plan for the worst. Recent events have provided good returns for some hedge funds, hard times for other hedge funds but harsher times for long only. Skilled absolute return managers don’t make money every month but they do have milder and shorter duration drawdowns than index funds.
I wrote back in January that the Dow and Nikkei would likely fall below 10,000 this year as a result of the credit crisis and owning stock index option puts has indeed been the top performing strategy this year. But those were just lucky guesses. I can’t time markets so personally I’ll be focusing on funds that can preserve capital, control drawdowns and generate alpha no matter what happens.
Flight to quality? Some real hedge funds are positive for the year even when the aggregate returns for the industry are negative. Performance dispersion is enormous in such a diverse universe. Several strategies have not been affected by prime brokers imploding, changes in short selling rules or the leverage lockdown. The best managed futures CTAs, global macro and options traders have been generating absolute returns throughout the equity and credit mayhem. Strategy diversification is so important since forecasting is difficult. Transitions from one market regime to another often requires a financial revolution. Read Complete Article
Seeking Alpha – Hedge funds often try to offset potential losses in the principal markets they invest in by hedging their investments using a wide variety of techniques. For this very reason, many of them rarely disclose any of their investment strategies because they do not want others to duplicate.
Hedge funds can invest in almost every investment instrument that exists as they are considered superior investment vehicles in down markets.
This is based on their ability to invest in options and short selling. The data, however, reveals that average returns vary widely across hedge funds and it shows, as the following table suggests, that using a broad range of strategies and techniques doesn’t necessarily guarantee absolute returns.
Seeking Alpha – Investors pulled at least $43bn from U.S. hedge funds in September as market turmoil led to unprecedented withdrawals, an analysis by a leading research house shows.
The data from TrimTabs Investment Research – which was to be sent to clients late on Wednesday – come as hedge funds are working to prevent far bigger redemptions by the end of the year, when many funds give investors a chance to take out money.
Withdrawals can lead to a vicious circle in the markets, as funds sell holdings to return money to clients, depressing prices and prompting further redemptions.
The chief executive of a leading alternative investment manager said he expected the hedge fund industry to shrink by 50 per cent in coming months – with half the decline coming from withdrawals and half coming from investment losses.
Conrad Gunn, chief operating officer of TrimTabs, said the $43bn in September withdrawals would mark “the beginning of what we expect to be a series of outflows for the remainder of the year. We expect October outflows to be larger.”
The industry, which manages close to $2,000bn, has experienced outflows during only a handful of months previously, including a small outflow in April of this year.
Seeking Alpha – As the Wall Street Journal pointed out earlier this week, “It may be premature to write the epitaph for funds of hedge funds”.
Maybe so, but with predictions for redemptions running in the high teens for this fall, one would be excused for believing the hedge fund “bubble” has burst along with the many other bubbles inflated over the past few years.
Yet, WSJ sister publication, eFinancial news reports this week that: “Pensions Continue Push into Hedge Funds”. This seems to back up what research firm Cerulli recently concluded – that institutions are continuing to move from long-only to alternative assets (see Monday’s post for clear evidence of this).
Dow Jones points to the UK’s University Superannuation Scheme (USS) as one example of the new and more grounded institutional view of hedge funds:
Michael Powell, head of alternative assets at the pension scheme, said: ‘The turbulence in the hedge fund industry has provided USS with a great opportunity as a new entrant. The fallout in the industry will also prove to be a great arbitrator of quality and skill among the huge number of hedge funds.’
Seeking Alpha – Some analysts say a big-picture trend presently unfolding involves hedge funds and other players unwinding bets on commodities/foreign currencies and plowing the proceeds into U.S. financial and other stocks. They are doing this for valuation reasons and as a haven against weakening economies overseas.
There is some evidence that it at least partly reflects hedge funds scrambling to raise cash to meet redemption requests. Financial stocks have risen for sure, but that likely reflects hedge funds buying back short positions to generate cash, not to go long because they think the fundamentals are turning.
I remain somewhat skeptical of the thesis that the U.S. economy is close to coming out of the downturn, and so the places to shift into are U.S. stocks and the U.S. dollar. When one looks at the problems the U.S. has, especially in its financial sector, they would seem to have the potential to inflict more pain on the economy than we have seen to date.
Seeking Alpha – CNBC’s Ron Insana is folding the tent on his Insana Capital Partners L.P. hedge fund called "Legends." On August 8, 2008 sent a letter to his investors to announce they were closing shop and taking a job with Steven Cohen of SAC Capital.
"Our current level of assets under management, coupled with the extraordinarily difficult capital-raising environment, make it imprudent for Insana Capital Partners to continue business operations."
Ronald G. Insana left CNBC in March 2006 to set-up Insana Capital Partners L.P. This was a hedge fund known as a "fund of funds." Ron had the idea to use his fame to charge people hedge fund fees to select hedge funds. At the time I thought this was much like CMGI at the peak of the internet bubble. CMGI as an over valued internet holding company that invested in internet stocks then got a similar premium for its investments. According to the NY Times article, "Running a Hedge Fund Is Harder Than It Looks on TV," there was an advantage of paying Insana, access to great funds:
