Alternative Investment

News Alternative strategies for a democratic U.S. Congress

Read article

Strategy The EM FX carry trade is back

Read article

Strategy Five reasons why special situations outlook is brightening

Special Situations strategies have been under pressure in 2020, both on their event and credit arbitrage books. Due to their long structural market beta, managers have underperformed early this year. They have retraced most but not all they have (...)

Read article

Strategy Dollar depreciation helps CTAS

Since the U.S. presidential election on November 3 th, the USD has started a descent that may have legs under the new administration. The easing of trade tensions and an accommodative policy mix could put additional pressure on the DXY, which was down -1.7% since the (...)

Read article

Strategy Most L/S Equity emerge unscathed from factor rotations

Several hedge fund strategies have momentum biases, in particular L/S Equity, and CTAs. Considering the fact that this rotation took place in a bullish environment, most hedge fund strategies ended the week in positive (...)

Read article

Strategy Hedge fund positioning ahead of U.S. Elections

If past elections provide any guidance, prospects for a Trump reelection look slim. History suggests that a second term reelection almost always requires strong growth. In most past election campaigns, polls did not materially shift after (...)

Read article

Strategy Our thoughts on the rally in momentum stocks

Momentum is a strategy which buys stocks trending higher and sells stocks on a downtrend within an index. It is systematic and has no considerations for earnings, valuation, or other fundamental metrics such as (...)

Read article

Opinion Weaker Alpha potential in EM Debt after the rally…temporarily

The market crash that began in March sent the spread of EM debt (for the hard currency aggregate) to nearly 700 bps. It is now only 30 bps away from the pre-crisis level. This spread tightening reflects the ongoing economic recovery EM countries. Trends in Covid-19 are (...)

Read article

News What are activists buying after the storm?

The Special Situations strategy went through a roller coaster since February. Typically, due to their long structural market beta, managers tend to underperform in risk-off episodes. However, as they also tend to look beyond short-term volatility, they usually rebound (...)

Read article

News Mixed outlook for L/S Equity Neutral and Short-Selling

Lyxor’s L/S Equity Neutral peer group was down -2.8% year-to-date, hurt by extreme trading conditions and the constituents’ average market beta of 20%. The environment has been challenging for the strategy amid extreme stock volatility and unsettling heavy systematic trading (...)

Read article

Strategy CTAs as shock absorbers

In the space of alternative strategies, Global Macro and Event-Driven strategies rebounded the most since March 23rd. Both Merger Arbitrage and Special Situations sub strategies benefitted as M&A deal spreads tightened significantly since (...)

Read article

Note ESMA report values EU Alternative Investment Funds at €5.8 trillion

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) today published its second statistical report on European Union (EU) Alternative Investment Funds (AIF). The study found that the EU AIF sector in 2018, as measured by Net Asset Value (NAV), amounted to €5.8tn or nearly 40% (...)

Read article

Strategy Small, Medium, Large HF: How to choose?

Should alternative portfolios favor smaller, medium, or larger hedge funds? The choice might not be as obvious as before and may be more dependent on the stage of the business cycle. For many years, small hedge funds have steadily outperformed their large peers, sometimes by (...)

Read article

Strategy Trend reversals briefly halted the CTA rise

Despite the escalation of trade tensions during the third quarter, economic activity has remained quite resilient. Macro data releases even managed to beat expectations in the U.S. and in Japan, leading to a sudden rise in bond yields over the course of (...)

Read article

Strategy Falling Geopolitical Premium to fuel Global Macro Strategies

Progress in trade talks between the U.S. and China and in Brexit negotiations knocked down safe assets last week. Bond yields rose in most developed countries and gold prices fell, as the stance on both thorny issues reversed and turned (...)

Read article

Note Are markets becoming more unstable?

Readers of financial news may believe that ‘market corrections’, or ‘shocks’, or ‘five-sigma events’ are more common than they used to be. Winton Capital Management look at the historical data for a number of financial markets and find that there is no evidence for increasing (...)

Read article

Regulation Regulatory prospects: 2012 and beyond

2009 was a year of intense reflection on the functioning of the financial sector. There followed an intense regulatory activity in 2010, unfortunately with few formal adoptions of regulations. 2011 marked the surge of the will to succeed with provisional schedules. Where do (...)

Read article

Regulation Regulatory outlook: 2011 and beyond

It is well documented that over the past two years the European and US Authorties have made numerous efforts to strengthen the regulatory and supervisory framework that apply to financial activities.

Read article

News Institutional investor appetite is back for quant funds

The recent CTA performances encourage institutional investors to more closely monitor this type of hedge fund. Thus, according to Preqin, 52% of them wish to increase their exposure to this type of alternative strategy this year (vs 14% last (...)

Read article

Innovation EXQIM announces the launch of Exqim Blue Fund

Created by two former senior executive managers of SGAM AI, Exqim launches Exqim Blue Fund, a multi-asset fund whose investment process is based on quantitative strategies and allocation.

Read article

Pedagogy What is Long/Short Equity ?

Hedge funds apply a vast array of investment strategies which can be more or less complex. In this article, we shall focus on the Long / Short strategy…

Read article

Strategy Agricultural land rush of investment funds!

After launching products indexed to changes in prices of agricultural products, many banks and investment funds are turning now to the land acquisition...

Read article

News Alternative investors hunt yield in post crisis Europe under review at Debtwire’s European Forum

Debtwire hosts its seventh European forum at the Dorchester in London today. Senior bankers, lawyers, investors, financial sponsors, corporate finance and debt advisory specialists will provide their insight on the current state of the debt market, spanning from primary (...)

Read article

Note Hedge funds: The CTAs drift

Since mid-2011, CTAs cumulative loss is between -10.6% (HFRI macro systematic index) and -16.8% (Credit Suisse Managed Futures Index). For the first quarter of this year, CTAs show a drawdown of about 3% which is expected to increase in April (-0.66% for HFRX CTA index) (...)

Read article

Strategy Re-weighting carry strategies

In a context where monetary conditions are more accommodative and sovereign bond yields are back to low levels, it seems appropriate to re-weight carry strategies such as EM-focused Global Macro and L/S Credit.

Read article

Opinion Combining différent styles for risk premia strategies

According to Ronen Israel, principal at AQR Capital Management, four investment “styles” — Value, Momentum, Carry and Defensive — have emerged as compelling sources of alternative returns, backed by economic theory and decades of data across geographies and asset (...)

Read article

News Sunny Summer for Hedge Funds

The Lyxor Hedge Fund index was up a healthy +0.7% since the beginning of August, with progress in most strategies, supported by the positive performance of risky assets. The Bank of England’s activism and the Brexit timeline getting pushed back contributed toward easing (...)

Read article

Strategy Concentrated long-short investing to achieve absolute return

According to Amit Kumar and Ashish Kochar, US Equity Portfolio Manager at Columbia Threadneedle Investment, investor caution on market outlook places increased focus on generating alpha. Long-short equity portfolios have the potential to generate greater alpha as individual (...)

Read article

Strategy A Rising Tide Lifts Most Boats

The broad-based market upswing in the first half of July has benefitted risk assets globally. That follows the release of better than expected economic data in the US and China, suggesting that fears over the strength of the global recovery have been (...)

Read article

Note Deutsche Bank releases annual Alternative Investment Survey highlighting hedge fund sentiment and allocation trends for 2016

Deutsche Bank released its 14th annual Alternative Investment Survey, one of the industry’s largest and longest standing hedge fund investor surveys...

Read article