The first quarter update examines the switch in the performance of value- and growth-oriented managers and reviews the changes over the quarter that contributed to better performance from uncorrelated and systematic macro strategies.
Event-driven strategies have struggled since mid-2014, but the headwinds recently plaguing them could become less forceful in the months ahead.
This chart book presents representative marketable and hedge fund manager performance for fourth quarter 2015. The median US REIT manager again posted the highest median quarterly return, 7.7% for fourth quarter 2015. The lowest median returns for the quarter (-1.4%) were posted by the median High-Yield Bonds manager and the median Credit Opportunities manager.
This quarter’s publication reviews three of the crosscurrents that swept the hedge fund investment landscape in fourth quarter and then delves more deeply into the event-driven space, examining some of the causes of recent poor performance in this area and the prospects going forward.
This chart book presents representative marketable and hedge fund manager performance for third quarter 2015.
Volatility further increased in the third quarter, with a number of notable “events.” First, the People’s Bank of China devalued the Chinese yuan (RMB, CNY) by almost 2% in early August. Ostensibly one step on the path to a designation of special drawing rights by the International Monetary Fund, it was, in fact, a response…
Diversified growth funds (DGFs) have garnered significant attention and assets—particularly amongst UK defined benefit pension schemes—as a less volatile source of long-term growth. DGFs can be valuable tools for pension portfolio management, but only if trustees understand what they are buying and how it fits into the context of the total portfolio. The simple bifurcation of the available products into traditional and absolute return strategies can be a starting point for trustees to help make sense of the market and set appropriate risk/return expectations across different market environments.
Given a choice today between competing investment strategies, activists would not be near the top of our list, as the fawning attention over successful activists has narrowed the available opportunity set by boosting the available pool of money and drawing in new managers.
This chart book presents representative marketable and hedge fund manager performance for second quarter 2015.
Long/Short Hedge Fund Strategies At the midpoint of 2015, hedge funds as a group have outpaced widely quoted US large capitalization equity market indexes. Through June 30, 2015, the S&P 500 Index is up 1.2% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is flat at 0.0% for the year, while the Credit Suisse Hedge Fund Index…