Alternative Investment

News Alternative strategies for a democratic U.S. Congress

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Strategy The EM FX carry trade is back

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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 (...)

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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 (...)

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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 (...)

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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 (...)

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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 (...)

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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 (...)

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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 (...)

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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 (...)

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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 (...)

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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% (...)

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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 (...)

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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 (...)

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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 (...)

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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 (...)

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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 (...)

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People Moves Jim Simons, the « Michael Jordan » of finance retires

Jim Simons has officially announced his retirement, leaving the reins of "Medallion Fund" - without doubt one of the greatest performing management funds in history - in the hands of his two co-successors, Peter Brown and Robert (...)

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Stories Capital Fund Management: Simply the best?

Discus Fund, one of CFM flagship funds, posted 23 percent year-to-date positive returns as of october end, the best performance amongst all the global systematic funds. This is the confirmation the know-how of the French manager which has shown exceptional trackrecords for (...)

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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 (...)

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Innovation Solactive launches European Quality Market Neutral Index

Solactive is announcing the launch of the Solactive European Quality Market Neutral Index licensed to Natixis. The index is to be used as an underlying for structured products issued by Natixis.

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Interview Xavier Morin: "In 2021, we are seeing a real resurgence of interest in our strategies that are weakly correlated to the equity market"

According to Xavier Morin, co-CIO and in charge of the Event Driven Equity division at Syquant Capital, dividend arbitrage is deployed in the 4 Helium equity funds. The aim of this strategy is to capture discounts on Future Dividendes SX5E while limiting market (...)

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Opinion Bond Pain trade for global macro

Gyrations in U.S. rates were highly challenging to navigate. Bond volatility surged in October as the Fed prepared to withdraw monetary accommodation and as investors struggled to assess the medium-term path of (...)

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Note Investors Increase Pressure on Hedge Funds to Lower Fees

The latest research from Preqin on hedge fund fees finds that lower recent performance, high-profile redemptions and increased concern from investors on the issue of fees have influenced many hedge fund managers to bring their management and performance charges below the 2 (...)

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Strategy Alternative risk premia weathering Brexit storm well

Pierre-Yves Moix, co-manager of the Alternative Risk Premia strategy at GAM, comments on how the growing alternative risk premia industry has delivered strong performance in the uncertain Brexit environment – proving once again its strong diversification and market neutral (...)

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Strategy Mega Mergers to keep fueling Risk Arbitrage

With risk assets back to record highs, markets are currently looking for the next catalyst that would push equities higher. But with the Fed potentially signaling a looming reduction in asset purchases at the next FOMC meeting on June 16, it seems wise to remove some risk (...)

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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.

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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…

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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 (...)

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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) (...)

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