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Bloomberg – Hedge fund assets increased by $10.6 billion in July, rising for a third straight month, as managers trading shares benefited from global stock market gains, according to Eurekahedge Pte.
Net inflows into the industry totaled $2.1 billion, while gains through performance were $8.5 billion, bringing total assets under management to $1.35 trillion, the Singapore-based research firm said in a report posted on its Web site.
Hedge fund managers are making a comeback after suffering their worst year on record in 2008, as stock markets recover amid optimism that stimulus measures will help put an end to the worst of the global economic recession. The MSCI World Index jumped 8.4 percent in July, bringing its year-to-date advance to 14 percent.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - Bullman Investment Management (BIM), headed by Nick Bullman, has officialy launched the Bullman Global Fund, a global multi-strategy hedge fund with a minimum investment of $100,000.
"Since launch, the Bullman Global Fund has returned 0.76% compared with its benchmarks- the Tremont MS Index and MSCI World Index returns of -13.76% and -36.43% respectively over the same timeframe." Nick Bullman, Managing Partner at BIM said, "We believe there are times in the economic cycle when macro investments provide the best risk adjusted returns and liquidity. At other times, equity valuations become so compelling that they provide a better long term risk reward payoff. Our strategy is to run three distinct and separate portfolio modes. Stress Mode, Transition Mode and Benign Mode. These modes are triggered by objective external inputs. This approach allows us to control risk and preserve capital, and to search the globe for investments that meet our risk return objectives."
The fund’s objective is to seek long term capital appreciation in a broad array of quoted instruments, notably global equities, bonds, commodities and derivatives. While the fund has been managing money since June 2008, marketing of the fund has been low key until now. With the appointment of Roger Mortimer (previously Vice President of Kotak Mahindra (UK) Ltd) to Head of Sales, the firm intends to raise assets from third party investors now that a one-year track record has been achieved.
Roger Mortimer, Head of Sales at BIM, said, "I am delighted to have joined BIM, which I believe has a sensibly conservative approach to investing in the current climate with the flexibility to transit through to a higher risk strategy, as and when true market fundamentals return. The fund is aimed at long term investors, with a focus on minimising draw-downs during times of high volatility, whilst maintaining long-term appreciation for the patient investor through a value-based approach. In conjunction with Bath University, BIM is constantly developing its own Investment Risk Profiling System, which I believe will deliver significant improvements on the standard VaR models currently in use."
BIM was founded in June 2008 by Nick Bullman, was formerly Chairman and Head of Risk at Investor Select Advisors, a global fund of hedge funds. In addition to Nick’s experience in the hedge fund space, over the past 26 years in the financial industry he has also worked at Scrimgeour Vickers, James Capel and Goldman Sachs in Equity Sales and syndication. Bullman has seeded the Bullman Global Fund with a significant portion of his personal wealth, according to the launch statement.
Alex Akesson
Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: alex@hedgeco.net
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West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge funds took modest advantage of March’s upswings in the global equity and credit markets, according to Morningstar’s hedge fund performance summary for the first quarter of 2009.
Equity markets around the world significantly rebounded in March as appetite for risk returned, especially in emerging markets, according to the report. Positive lending and manufacturing news in China coupled with higher commodity prices, which helped stocks in other emerging economies such as Russia, drove the Morningstar MSCI Emerging Markets and Morningstar Emerging Markets Hedge Fund Indexes to increase 4.2% and 6.2%, respectively.
"In March we saw a recovery in equity and some credit markets, which helped hedge funds post small gains. But many hedge fund managers, believing that the economy is not yet out of hot water, continued to remain cautious, and were not strongly positioned to participate in the market rally," said Nadia Papagiannis, Morningstar hedge fund analyst. The Morningstar MSCI Developed Markets Hedge Fund Index rose only 1.1% in March compared to the MSCI World Index, which climbed 7.2%.
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Bloomberg – Australian hedge funds returned an average 2.1 percent in March, beating the 1.3 percent profit of their global peers.
The Australian Fund Monitors Index, which tracks the performance of more than 200 hedge funds managed from within the country, rebounded from a 1.6 percent drop in February, according to a report by Australian Fund Monitors based on 42 percent of the funds reporting. The S&P/ASX 200 Index jumped 7.1 percent in March while the MSCI World Index advanced 7.2 percent.
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.
Bloomberg – The global hedge fund industry may shrink by 11 percent this year as funds liquidate and investor withdrawals persist, a Deutsche Bank AG survey said.
Industry assets may fall to $1.33 trillion by December, according to 68 percent of the 1,000 investors surveyed by Germany’s largest bank last month. The respondents, which hold a combined $1.1 trillion of hedge-fund assets, on average expect outflows from the industry to accelerate to $168 billion this year, 8 percent faster than last year.
The deepest financial crisis since the 1930s led to the worst average hedge-fund performance in history last year, prompting funds managed by Citadel Investment Group LLC and D.E. Shaw & Co. LP. to limit withdrawals to stem record outflows.
“If 2008 was a story about performance of hedge funds, 2009 is very much going to be a story about restructuring,” said Sean Capstick, Deutsche Bank’s London-based global head of capital introduction. “Our survey indicates redemptions will continue as a phenomenon for the foreseeable future.”
In a March 13 note to investors, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Brad Hintz forecast hedge-fund assets to fall 18 percent this year, dropping below $1 trillion before a recovery in 2013.
The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index retreated 18 percent in 2008, its steepest annual decline. Still, that was less than half the 42 percent slump of the MSCI World Index.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Morningstar reported a summary of hedge fund performance for January 2009 as well as asset flows for 2008. As stocks and government bonds got clobbered in January, hedge funds held up relatively well, the report said.
The Morningstar 1000 Hedge Fund Index declined only 1.2% and the currency-hedged Morningstar with MSCI Hedge Fund Composite Asset-Weighted Index rose 1.2%, against the MSCI World Index’s 8.9% drop and the BarCap Global Aggregate Index’s 3.3% decline.
"Some liquidity returned to the credit markets in January, helping certain hedge fund strategies, but even hedge funds trading equities persevered through January’s tough markets," said Morningstar Hedge Fund Analyst Nadia Papagiannis. "Overall, hedge funds held their own in January."
The rise in the U.S. dollar created profits for some price-trend-following and global-macro non-trend funds in January, but volatility across equity, government bond, and commodity markets throughout the month led to trading losses. The Morningstar Global Non-Trend Hedge Fund Index rose 0.1% while the Morningstar Global Trend Hedge Fund Index declined 1.6%.
Investors continued to pull out of hedge funds, withdrawing $26 billion in December and $70 billion for the year. Europe- and U.S.-equity hedge funds saw the largest redemptions, losing $14.8 and $18.3 billion respectively in 2008.
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Bloomberg – Hedge funds posted their first back- to-back gain in eight months in January, rebounding from record losses in 2008 as North American managers benefited from betting stocks would fall, an industry report showed.
The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index, which tracks more than 2,000 funds worldwide, gained 0.5 percent last month, extending the 0.8 percent advance in December, according to preliminary data compiled by Eurekahedge Pte. Last time the index rose for two months in a row was in April and May 2008. The January advance contrasts with the 8.9 percent slide by the MSCI World Index of stocks in developed markets.
Bloomberg – Artradis Fund Management Pte, RAB Capital Plc’s Northwest unit and Cannizaro (Hong Kong) Ltd. are cutting fees and locking up investors’ money for longer in new hedge funds that will buy bonds after prices fell in Asia.
Merrill Lynch & Co.’s prime brokerage unit has been approached by at least eight money managers about starting such funds in Asia to buy beaten-up fixed-income securities such as convertible bonds, said Eddie Guillemette, the firm’s regional co-head of global markets financing and services. Some of the hedge fund managers are offering to reduce management and performance-based fees by as much as 50 percent, he said.
“You’ve got people who are now setting up vehicles with long lockups to take advantage of distressed or stressed asset classes where the pricing is now at a multidecade level of cheapness,” said Richard Johnston, Hong Kong-based Asia head of hedge fund consulting firm Albourne Partners Ltd. The UBS Convertible Asia ex-Japan Index is down 37 percent in dollar terms this year.
