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New York (HedgeCo.net) – According to an article in last week’s Wall Street Journal, a sizable contingent of bond fund managers are taking advantage of this year’s robust market for debt securities by locking in yearly gains, content to wait until January to seek out any new opportunities.
In particular, managers of funds investing in riskier debt, such as junk bonds, asset-backed securities, and leveraged loans have spearheaded the trend. Given the elevated level of risk associated with these strategies, many managers appear satisfied to let year-to-date returns speak for themselves. As of November 10, junk bonds have returned 52.38% year-to-date, while asset-backed securities have posted a 24.69% return. Additionally, leveraged loans have returned 48.5% on average. Concedes Chris Munck, a trader at B. Riley & Co., “We have had a hell of a rally here. I can’t imagine there is any more upside.”
This theme reflects one of the investment community’s headline trends of 2009, the return to risk. For the opportunistic hedge fund or money manager, the end of 2008 presented a tremendous buying opportunity. While a significant number of funds unloaded assets in order to meet investor redemptions, purchasers were able to scoop up assets, especially less-liquid debt instruments, considerably cheaply.
Meanwhile, with the backing of a fresh string of government programs, including the Term Asset-Backed Liquidity Facility and the Federal Reserve Bank’s purchases of Treasury and mortgage bonds, these assets have recovered their values quite quickly, rewarding opportunistic buyers as the demand-and with it, prices- for such securities has risen.
Dave Wormus
Contributing Writer, HedgeCo.net
news@hedgeco.net
Bloomberg – Pinpoint Investment Advisor Ltd., a hedge fund manager of $560 million, returned as much as four times its Asian peers this year through July with profits from a rebound in Chinese stocks and debt securities.
The $70 million Pinpoint Opportunities Fund, which gained 85 percent in the period, invested about half its assets in convertible and high-yield bonds, including those of Chinese property developers, said Duanmu Yongshan, Pinpoint’s Hong Kong- based chief marketing officer. The $300 million Pinpoint China Fund returned nearly 51 percent in the period, he said.
ReportonBusiness.com – Financial gurus call it a “rerecuritization of real estate mortgage investment conduits.” On Wall Street, it goes by the acronym Re-Remic (it rhymes with epidemic).
“It actually makes a lot of fundamental sense,” said Brian Bowes, the head of mortgage trading at Hexagon Securities in New York. “It’s taking a bond that doesn’t necessarily have a natural buyer and creating two bonds that might have a natural buyer for each.”
As for the bottom-of-the-barrel bonds that are left over, those are getting sold off for pennies on the dollar to investors and hedge funds willing to take big risk for the chance of a big reward.
Bloomberg – The European Union’s plan to regulate hedge funds will cost the bloc’s pension industry about 25 billion euros ($36 billion) a year, the Alternative Investment Management Association said.
The proposed law would drive pension funds toward more traditional assets such as equities and bonds or cut the returns on their investments in hedge funds and private equity, London- based AIMA, the largest trade group representing the industry, said in a statement today.
“This is an estimated figure but it shows the potentially enormous impact that the directive could have on Europe’s pension funds and in the longer term, Europe’s pensioners,” AIMA Chief Executive Officer Andrew Baker said in the statement.
Korea Herald – The CEO of Korea Investment Corp. said yesterday the company would invest $1 billion in inflation-hedging assets such as price-linked bonds, commodities and real estate assets as part of its exit strategy, amid rising concerns over possible "hyper inflation." The nation’s sovereign wealth fund received $3 billion from the Finance Ministry in July, of which it will spend $2 billion in investing in traditional overseas bonds and stocks, and the remaining $1 billion in new alternative investments like inflation-hedging assets.
With the $3 billion included, the KIC now manages a $27.8 billion fund, of which $17 billion came from the Bank of Korea and 10.8 billion from the Finance Ministry.
The Guardian – The BIS said the retreat from riskier investments such as stocks in favour of safer bonds could pressure stock markets, delaying their recovery. "Similarly, the decline in the pension wealth of households participating in defined contribution plans and of employers sponsoring defined benefit plans has implications for aggregate spending," the BIS said.
Hedge funds did not play a central role in shaping the crisis but they will feel its impact, the BIS said.
After many wealthy individual investors withdrew, the funds are targeting institutions.
"Such a shift engenders demands for greater transparency about the investment strategy and greater scrutiny of risk management processes," the BIS said.
Bloomberg – Boaz Weinstein, the bond trader who lost more than $1 billion last year at Deutsche Bank AG, has raised about $160 million since the end of April for his new hedge fund, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Saba Capital Management LP, based in New York, plans to start trading in August, said a third person with knowledge of the firm. The people asked not to be identified because the information is private.
Saba, Hebrew for grandfather, was the name of the credit unit Weinstein started at Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank in 2001. Weinstein, 35, lost money in 2008 after betting on bonds of companies such as Ford Motor Co. and hedging some of those wagers with credit-default swaps, contracts to protect against or speculate on default, people familiar with the matter said in January when the plans to start his own fund were made public.
Guardian.co.uk – Lloyd’s of London, the specialist insurance market, has offered to buy back up to 100 million pounds ($145 million) worth of bonds at a hefty discount.
The offer applies to fixed/floating rate subordinated notes due 2024 and subordinated notes due 2025 as well as perpetual subordinated capital securities. The bonds are all rated A-.
Lloyd’s said the transaction would allow it to benefit from a significant discount on the securities without materially affecting its capital position.
Bloomberg – Global Tactical Trust, a hedge fund run out of Australia by Boston-based Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo & Co., is betting the recent rally in stocks will end, and is avoiding high-risk investments.
The hedge fund that invests based on global economic trends returned 13 percent last year, when the industry posted average declines of 19 percent, by wagering against equities and backing bonds. Managed by Jason Halliwell, the fund is long the U.S. dollar, yen, U.S. Treasuries and gold, expecting them to rise, while remaining neutral on equities.
Media Monitors Network – "The US Federal Reserve Bank, a private institution, is printing $1 trillion to buy toxic bonds to shore up the economy. Will this work? Perhaps temporarily but most economists predict a sharp decline in the value of the dollar within the next five years. With too many dollars in circulation and a massive debt, the dollar will fall in value vis-à-vis other currencies. The Chinese have already called for a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar as it did to the British pound after the Second World War."
Bloomberg – Theodoro Messa’s Paineiras Hedge FIM hedge fund beat 96 percent of its peers this year on bets Brazilian bond yields will fall as the central banks slashes borrowing costs to shore up Latin America’s largest economy.
Messa is buying bonds and avoiding stocks because the global recession will persist longer than investors expect, requiring Brazilian policy makers to deepen interest rate cuts, he said. He predicts zero economic growth for Brazil in 2009.
Bloomberg – BlackRock Inc.’s global macro fund, the world’s second-best performer over two years among hedge funds that invest based on economic trends, is betting against this month’s equities rally and buying bonds as a recovery from the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression falters.
BlackRock’s A$216 million ($152 million) Asset Allocation Alpha Fund returned 41 percent in 2008, when hedge funds around the world lost a record 19 percent on average. The fund is short U.S. and Australian equities, expecting them to decline, and long U.S., German, Australian, Canadian, and U.K. bonds, said its manager David Hudson.
“The risk is that the economic recovery disappoints in the second half and that equity markets need to revisit their lows in the next few months and maybe go through them,” Sydney-based Hudson said in an interview March 20.
The MSCI World Index, which tumbled 42 percent last year, has rallied 21 percent since March 9, boosted in part by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to pump money into the economy to get credit flowing. Hudson profited from the declines last year by betting against equities.
BlackRock, which oversees $1.3 trillion, is the biggest publicly traded asset manager in the U.S. Over a third of total assets are managed on behalf of non-U.S. investors, and nearly one-third of its employees are outside the U.S.
