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Tuscaloosa News – A committee of University of Alabama trustees voted to pull some investments from stocks, instead buying more stable U.S. and international bonds in an effort to avoid potential drops in the stock market.
International bonds will be bought as well as domestic to hedge against the deflating dollar, said Thomas Gale, investment officer for the system.
“In light of the fact that the stock market is no longer cheap, we are reducing our stock exposure slightly, thus reducing the volatility of the endowment fund,” Gale said after the meeting.
HedgeCo.net (West Palm Beach) – Long/Short Equity hedge funds continued to increase overall net exposures in July, enabling managers to capitalize on market upswings early in the month, according to Jordan Drachman, Head of Research for Alternative Beta Strategies at Credit Suisse.
Dr. Drachman noted, ”As risk appetite returns to the market, many Long/Short Equity hedge fund managers have increased their overall net exposures, which enabled them to generate positive returns as equity markets bounced back early in July. Despite mid-month volatility, managers were able to preserve gains to finish up for the month. The Credit Suisse Long/Short Equity Replication Index was up 1.96% (net) for the month, while the Credit Suisse Global Macro Replication Index finished up 0.03% over the same period.”
AIR Indices seek to replicate the performance of major hedge fund strategies and enable investors to gain liquid, transparent insight into the Global Macro and Long/Short Equity sectors of the Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge Fund Index. The AIR platform also offers inverse indices that seek to approximate short exposure to the aggregate returns of the universe of Long/Short Equity and Global Macro hedge fund managers.
Performances for the AIR Global Macro and Long/Short Equity Indices are calculated daily and shown net of a 1.15% per annum calculation fee.
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HedgeCo.net (West Palm Beach) – New York-based currency manager FX Concepts is launching a new Luxembourg-domiciled fund investing in its flagship Global Currency Program (GCP). The fund has been set up in conjunction with Deutsche Bank.
“Investor interest in active currency strategies has been very strong this year, and we’re delighted to make our Global Currency Program available to investors in UCITS format” said John R. Taylor, Chairman and CEO of FX Concepts. The new fund offers daily liquidity and has a €25,000 minimum ($35,000). Investments are fully collateralized and ring-fenced in accordance with the UCITS III directive. The fund will offer share classes in Euro, US Dollars, Sterling and Yen.
“In the current financial climate, investors are looking for strategies which offer maximum liquidity and transparency”, says Daniel Szor, Managing Director and head of FX Concepts’ London office. “FX fits these criteria very well, and now clients can participate through a fund which offers daily liquidity and minimized counterparty risk”.
The Global Currency Program invests in a diversified portfolio of 20-25 currency positions chosen from a universe of over 30 currencies. The program targets annualized returns of 10-15% with low volatility and has a track record of over eight years.
Alex Akesson
Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: alex@hedgeco.net
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West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) -While previous research has confirmed the widely held belief that emerging funds tend to outperform older and larger funds, hedge fund performance in 2008 saw a partial reversal of that trend, according to PerTrac Financial Solutions in its third annual study that examines hedge fund returns, volatility and risk, based on age and size.
“Last year was a difficult one for hedge funds of all ages and sizes, but once again we saw younger funds outperforming older ones, confirming our findings from earlier studies,” said Meredith Jones, managing director at PerTrac. “However, when it comes to hedge fund performance as a function of fund size, we saw a reversal of the trend established from 1996 through 2007. During 2008, funds with the least assets actually performed the worst, while larger funds posted better returns.”
As in past studies, PerTrac conducted two different analyses: one based on a fund’s asset size, and the other based on a fund’s age. Monthly hedge fund returns were compiled from leading hedge fund databases and analyzed using the proprietary PerTrac Analytical Platform software. In each analysis, funds were re-categorized into one of three assets under management (AUM) size groups: up to $100 million; $100 million to $500 million; and over $500 million. The funds were also categorized into one of three age groups: up to 2 years; 2 to 4 years; and over 4 years. The mean fund return was calculated for each group in each month, creating three size-based monthly indexes and three age-based monthly indexes. Various risk and return statistics were calculated on the returns of each index to evaluate historical performance, and Monte Carlo simulations were run on each index to indicate probable ranges of future returns and drawdowns.
Small Hedge Funds Underperformed Larger Funds for the First Time Since Beginning of Study Data.
The study reveals that small funds averaged a loss of -17.03% in 2008, while medium-sized and large funds fared better, with average losses of -16.04% and -14.10% for the year, respectively. However, over the full history of the indexes, from 1996 through 2008, small funds performed best, with an annualized return of 13.05% versus 9.99% for medium-sized funds and 9.28% for large funds. Along with its stronger returns, the small fund index also showed greater volatility over the 13-year period with an annualized standard deviation of 6.96% versus just 5.92% and 6.05% for the medium-sized and large fund indexes, respectively.
“There are several possible reasons why small funds underperformed their larger peers for the first time ever in 2008. Due to losses across the board, hedge funds experienced heavy redemption requests last year. Larger funds generally have more cash on hand and greater access to lines of credit than small funds, better enabling them to handle redemption requests without compromising their portfolios’ performance,” noted Jones. “The recent market crash also appears to have prompted a ‘flight to quality’ among investors, with surveys indicating that hedge fund investors have become more interested in larger, more ‘institutional’ funds. So it’s likely that smaller funds had to deal with relatively greater redemptions than did their larger peers. We also noted a larger differential in the number of large managers reporting in both the prior and current studies, with a larger percentage of small managers participating in both updates. As a result, there is heavier survivor bias in the large fund group. Other possible reasons include infrastructure considerations, greater reliance on beleaguered prime brokers, and larger redemptions from poor performers pushing more managers into lower asset bands.”
“However, one year does not make a trend,” concluded Jones. “It will be interesting to see whether the small funds’ underperformance in 2008 proves to be a short-term exception to the rule or the start of an official trend.”
Young Funds Continued to Outperform Older Funds in 2008
An examination of the relationship between fund age and performance revealed no surprises for 2008. Hedge funds with the shortest track record continued their trend of superior performance last year as the young fund index lost -11.31% for the year compared to much larger losses of -19.46% and -17.85% by the mid-age and older fund indexes, respectively. Over the full history of the indexes from 1996 through 2008, young funds have generated an annualized return of 15.74% while mid-age and older funds have trailed with annualized returns of 11.48% and 10.12%, respectively. Young funds have also fared best from a risk perspective over the long term; the young fund index has produced an annualized standard deviation of just 6.47% over the 13-year period while the mid-age and older fund indexes have proved more volatile with annualized standard deviations of 7.11% and 6.72%, respectively.
The new study is the latest in a growing body of research produced by PerTrac Financial Solutions for the investment community. The company is devoted to advancing the study of hedge funds and other investments by publishing original research as well as providing free access to their PerTrac Analytical Platform software to academic professors, students, and selected researchers through the PerTrac Educational Use Program.
Editing by Alex Akesson
For HedgeCo.Net Email: alex@hedgeco.net
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Reuters Tokyo – Hedge funds are dipping their toes back into the dollar/yen options market after months of absence, betting that eventual interest rate tightening by the U.S. Federal Reserve will help the greenback gain against the yen.
Dollar/yen’s implied volatility, a gauge of how much a currency pair is expected to move over a given period, has come down to levels not seen since before Lehman Brothers collapsed in mid-September, sending global markets into a tailspin.
The decline suggests market stress has eased substantially and investor confidence has risen after the battering dealt by the global financial crisis, but it also implies lessening demand for options to hedge against a further surge in the yen.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge fund adviser, Hennessee Group LLC, announced that the Hennessee Hedge Fund Index advanced +3.84% in April (+5.02% YTD).
“April continued to be a challenging environment for hedge funds, as the market rally was driven by short covering and momentum, rather than changes in fundamentals,” commented Charles Gradante, Co-Founder of Hennessee Group. “While we have seen some improvement in data (most typically that the rate of deterioration is slowing), most funds remain conservatively positioned. Funds are cautious and will wait for fundamentals to improve before significantly expanding their net exposures.”
“Hedge funds underperformed again in April, but have still outperformed year to date. Volatility remains elevated with the S&P 500 experiencing a gain or loss greater than 8% each month this year,” said Lee Hennessee , Managing Principal of Hennessee Group . “Last year hedge funds did a good job of protecting capital, so they don’t need a huge rally to reach a new high water mark. Equity markets would need to double from current levels to reach their previous high.”
Alex Akesson
Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: alex@hedgeco.net
HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds!
Bloomberg - Pengana Capital Ltd., a Sydney- based asset manager that oversees A$1.5 billion ($1.1 billion), aims to increase the amount of hedge fund assets that bet on market swings by six times in two years.
Pengana is seeking to grow assets managed by its Chicago- based volatility team to $2.5 billion from about $420 million currently, Russel Pillemer, co-founder and chief executive officer, said in an interview yesterday. Pengana’s Global Volatility Master Fund returned 19.3 percent last year, while the hedge fund industry fell an average 19 percent.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – March was a challenging month for hedge funds, which entered the month with tight net exposures, according to research by hedge fund consultant Hennessee LLC.
Technology and healthcare/biotech were bright spots for hedge funds, as these sectors were relative outperformers. While the strong equity rally did cause short squeezes, most hedge fund managers expect short portfolios to generate profits in the near term.
The Hennessee Hedge Fund Index advanced +1.37% in March (+1.09% YTD), while the S&P 500 advanced +8.54% (-11.67% YTD).
“Most funds were caught with tight net exposures and were unable to participate in the rally," Charles Gradante, Co-Founder of Hennessee Group said, "Managers were also hurt as the sectors they have been heavily short, such as financials, consumer discretionary and materials, were the sectors that rallied the strongest.”
“Despite the underperformance in March relative to the equity benchmarks, hedge funds are still outperforming for the year,” said Lee Hennessee , Managing Principal of Hennessee Group. “We expect that we will continue to see volatility throughout the year.”
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Reuters – The heat is on hedge funds to outperform markets and prove their worth to skeptical investors, and to do so requires strategies based on riding out spikes in volatility, seeking liquidity and deft trading.
Returns this year will, of course, not be what they were in the over-leveraged days before the financial crisis, but convictions on one’s investment strategies and asset allocation will help the best and brightest funds survive, industry experts told the Reuters Private Equity and Hedge Funds Summit.
The strategies expected to do well include commodity trading advisors’ managed futures accounts because they can perform well in times of heightened volatility. Funds that focus on macroeconomic developments were also seen outperforming other strategies given the tremendous changes in policy affecting markets globally and risks of both deflation and inflation.
New York (HedgeCo.Net) – Over $84 billion worth of U.S. hedge funds shut down last year, compared to just $18.7 billion in 2007, according to the latest data published by Absolute Return Magazine, a unit of HedgeFund Intelligence. More than 200 funds closed up shop in 2008, with 20 percent or $16 billion of those assets deriving from Madoff feeder funds.
The largest fund closure was Fairfield Greenwich Group’s Fairfield Sentry fund, which once managed $6.9 billion in assets, and fed almost all of their investments to Madoff funds. The other major Madoff feeder funds that faltered included Tremont Group’s Rye funds, which once managed $3.1 billion and Kingate Management’s Kingate Global Fund which was worth about $2.7 billion.
The largest failure unrelated to the Madoff scandal was Drake Management, who was forced to close funds that once oversaw $4.7 billion. Citigroup’s Old Lane Partners, another Multi-strategy hedge fund founded by its Chief Executive Vikram Pandit, decided to liquidate after unimpressive returns and mounting write downs by the bank. It once managed $4.4 billion in assets.
Here are the top 10 hedge fund closures of 2008 according to Absolute Return Magazine:
1. Fairfield Greenwich Group, Fairfield Sentry
Madoff feeder fund
6.9 Billion
2. Drake Management, Global Opp, Low Volatility, Abs. Return
Macro/Multi
4.7 Billion
3. Citigroup, Old Lane Partners
Multistrategy
4.4 Billion
4. D.B. Zwirn, Zwirn Special Opp. Fund
Multistrategy
4.0 Billion
5. Tontine Capital Management, Tontine Capital, Tontine Partners
Equity Long/Short
4.0 Billion
6. Ospraie Management, Ospraie Fund
Commodities
3.8 Billion
7. Highland Capital Management, Crusader, Highland Credit
Bloomberg – Artradis Fund Management Pte., whose volatility funds posted the best returns among Asian hedge funds last year, is betting continued market swings will help them outperform again in 2009.
While volatility will decline to “more normal levels” from the records set in 2008, the funds will continue “to be able to take advantage of significant moves in markets,” said Julian Ings-Chambers, a managing director at Artradis, Singapore’s biggest hedge-fund firm.
The $2.4 billion Artradis AB2 Fund, managed by Stephen Diggle and Richard Magides, rose 35 percent last year, according to the firm. The $1.8 billion Artradis Barracuda Fund, which uses less borrowed money than the AB2, added 27 percent. The funds, which place wagers on price swings, had the highest returns among Asia-focused hedge funds that manage at least $500 million, according to Eurekahedge Pte., a Singapore-based data provider.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Deutsche Bank’s foreign exchange (FX) trading platform, dbFX.com, reported a surge in customer numbers in 2008 as FX grew as an asset class of choice for investors amid the financial crisis.
The trading platform saw customer numbers increase by over 250%, as investors looked to FX as an alternative, and uncorrelated, asset class to equities and bonds. Volumes also notably increased from 2007, as investors took advantage of significant volatility in the market.
From a currency perspective, the EUR/USD was the most popular currency pair on the platform accounting for 41% of all trades, versus 20% of volume the previous year.
"Retail FX’s popularity as an asset class truly soared in 2008 from a customer and trading perspective," Betsy Waters, Global Director of dbFX.com, commented, "Looking ahead, we’re very bullish about the long term prospects for retail FX. As active traders become disenchanted with the equity markets they will turn to the FX markets for trading opportunities. In many countries, retail traders can only buy and hold equities, while FX markets offer the ability to buy and sell currencies based on your market views."
"Ultimately, FX is proven to be uncorrelated to bond and equity markets so it’s no surprise that retail investors are looking to FX, which is a proven asset class with institutional investors as a means of generating returns.” Waters concluded.
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