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.
Dow Jones – Man Group PLC said Thursday it is launching an onshore version of its AHL product, one of the largest single hedge funds with some $20 billion assets under management, in a further sign of the company’s confidence in boosting sales to private investors.
Man AHL Diversity is a managed-futures trading program, which means it follows and seeks to exploit persistent market trends. It will be managed by Man Investments, the asset management arm of Man Group, and marketed by hedge fund advisory company Dexion Capital Group.
Reuters – Equity investors are too negative about the hedge fund industry, says Neptune’s Jeremy Smith, who has recently bought shares in Man Group and expects more consolidation among traditional fund firms.
Smith, who manages the 42 million-pound Neptune UK Equity fund, said that while performance of Man’s flagship AHL managed futures strategy has been poor this year, shares in the world’s biggest listed hedge fund firm still look cheap.
”A lot of fund managers have written off the hedge fund industry but from anecdotal evidence it seems a lot of money is being raised” he said at a briefing with reporters late on Wednesday.
IndexUniverse.com – The New York-based ETF provider today filed papers with the Securities & Exchange Commission for three actively managed ETFs: the WisdomTree Real Return Fund, the WisdomTree Managed Futures Fund and the WisdomTree Long-Short Fund.
The Long-Short fund will pair positions in WisdomTree’s own dividend and profits-weighted ETFs against positions in comparable cap-weighted ETFs. The filing notes that WisdomTree’s fundamentally weighted ETFs “have the potential to outperform” traditional cap-weighted indexes, and this fund aims to capitalize on that potential. The Long-Short fund will be market neutral, holding equal long and short positions, aiming to deliver consistent returns regardless of market direction.
Reuters – Vito Fossella, a former U.S. congressman representing sections of New York until a drunk driving conviction last year, has joined controversial hedge fund Superfund Investment Group, the Staten Island Advance reported this week. The community newspaper, citing unnamed sources, said Fossella’s role at the firm was not known. Superfund officials and Fossella were not available for comment.
Superfund is a managed futures investment firm that wants to make hedge funds available to the masses. Founder Christian Baha, a former Austrian police officer and college drop-out, stars in television commercials that poke fun at his inability to pronounce "investor."
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – To root out fraud and to give investors increased confidence that their assets are being managed with institutions of integrity and honesty, AlphaMetrix formally introduced AlphaMetrix Financial Investigations, LLC, run by David Fisher, a 24-year veteran of the US Secret Service.
AlphaMetrix is a research and investment platform for managed futures and other liquid alpha strategies with approximately $1.7 billion on the platform.
“Under David’s leadership, the alternative investment company seeks to set a new standard for the due diligence on financial institutions,” the company said in a letter received by HedgeCo, “first focusing on those on the AlphaMetrix platform, and later as a third-party provider of due diligence services.”
Fisher has a strong domestic and international investigative background in financial fraud, background investigations, security planning and electronic crimes. In addition to responsibilities associated with the Secret Service’s well-known role protecting the President, Vice President and visiting Heads of State, Fisher also brings extensive experience from the agency’s core investigative mission into financial institution fraud, computer and telecommunications fraud, false identification documents, access device fraud, advance fee fraud, electronic funds transfers and money laundering.
“AlphaMetrix has always been known for our deep trading manager research capabilities, and the new Financial Investigations group takes that to an even higher level, with comprehensive background checks and reviews of operational risk,” said Aleks Kins, CEO of AlphaMetrix.
“This type of due diligence work takes a consummate professional, so we are particularly excited to have someone of David Fisher’s caliber on board to build AlphaMetrix Financial Investigations into a thriving organization,” he added.
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Chicago Tribune – Strong returns are a mixed blessing this year for investment funds that specialize in trading futures contracts.
While the stock market plunged about 35 percent, managed futures funds posted annual returns of about 16 percent, according to the Credit Suisse Tremont Hedge Fund Index.
That makes them one of the few havens for investors at a time when pensions, retirement savings and even prominent local hedge funds such as Citadel Investment Group and Magnetar Capital LLC have recorded big losses.
But the success of managed futures has also left them vulnerable to client withdrawals. Because market turmoil froze the assets in many portfolios, some institutional and individual investors are pulling money from managed futures.
