Editor's view: 29 July 2010
Like Paris in the spring, the lure of the Ucits space is proving a heady experience for many managers. First Europe fell for the charms of these onshore products, now the Americans are joining in a communal swoon.
04/03/2010
AlphaMetrix expands into hedge funds
AlphaMetrix, the managed account provider and CTA specialist, has revealed plans for an aggressive expansion into the traditional hedge fund space, HFMWeek can exclusively reveal.
The Chicago-based firm added its first non-CTA fund, a long/short equity vehicle, to its managed accounts platform on 2 March, and intends to grow its hedge fund pool aggressively over the next few months.
The managed accounts boom shows little sign of abating with news this week that hedge fund firm Ramius plans to roll out a new platform focused on investing in managed futures and global macro
managers. Last week, HFMWeek reported that Butterfield Fulcrum is to launch a $1bn managed accounts platform in April.
“We are currently in negotiations with over 20 hedge funds that will be coming on board shortly and I expect another 30 to 60 by the end of the year,” said Aleks Kins,
AlphaMetrix’s co-founder, president and chief executive officer.
With $2.1bn in AuM and 66 funds, AlphaMetrix’s platform is one of the largest managed accounts offerings in the world. “In 12 to 24 months’ time we expect to have more hedge funds than CTAs, and to have doubled our asset size,” said Kins.
Despite having concentrated purely on CTAs since the platform went live in January 2006, the plan, according to Kins, was always to gain momentum with managed futures and then leverage into the long/short equity space.
“Although we have a background in CTAs, we have long-held expertise in the long/short equity space too,” he says. “We always wanted to offer liquid hedge fund strategies, such as long/short equities, but five years ago the chance of getting hedge funds to participate with managed accounts was slim to none.
“Many of our investors have more allocated to hedge funds than managed futures and a lot of our institutional clients have, in the past, asked us why we weren’t listing long/short equity or market neutral funds.”
Funds currently offered on AlphaMetrix’s platform include Winton Capital Management and Krom River Trading. The firm has added $1bn in AuM since late 2008
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Comment: Amy B Hirsch
"It is imperative that investors of all types ensure they understand the relationship between the introducing party and the manager"
Investors sit tight on impaired assets
Playing the ‘what if’ game can be fun but, depending on the number of variables in question, it can get a little out of control. Apply this conceit to the hedge fund sector's performance during the financial crisis and the possible permutations become legion.
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Hedge inflows have slowed as volatile markets made sitting on the sidelines the safest option in Q2. According to figures from HFR, the quarter’s $9.5bn - a 30% drop from Q1’s $14bn – reflected the 'wait and see' policy of many investors as the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite dropped -2.5%. With nerves setting in, recent predictions of a boom of interest in the alpha potential of smaller managers also fell flat, with the lion’s share of money going to large $5bn-plus managers.
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