Micah Branch’s Post

As a Hedge Fund COO being able to scale both up and down with your tech stack is important. Annalices discusses with Hedgeweek. Hedge Funds and Technological Elasticity Neovest. https://lnkd.in/envzqTpx

Great to see a potential future need to scale down becoming an upfront consideration. If you have more capacity or functionality than you need it definitely makes sense to turn it off. Will be both cost beneficial and also reduce a firms environmental footprint. Ongoing management of capacity (down as well as up) is a practice that members of Sustainable Trading are working to implement. Fantastic to see it being put into practice and being rolled out to clients.

I found this table of 2023 hedge fund performance in a Bloomberg article on Haider macro hedge fund (there’s a paywall but basically it was -43.5% in 2023 after a +193% gain last year). Decided to add in the performance of low-cost, diversified passive funds in the US for good measure (disclaimer: not saying these are suitable in themselves for anyone). I suspect that if one had a similar 2022 table, the rankings would be quite different. As for hedge fund return data “over the long term” - there is quite a lot of survivorship bias. We like to think that we ourselves or some star managers we pay lots to or can access preferentially are better, faster and smarter than the market, and that the eye-watering returns are not just luck. There probably are some, but I’m skeptical about how consistently they can outperform over accumulation periods for retirement and other goals, and whether I am able to correctly pick them consistently. The Bloomberg article https://lnkd.in/ga_wWwjj

Billionaire Chris Rokos’s hedge fund cemented its position as one of the best-performing macro money pools so far this year, with year-to-date gains now reaching about 20%. His hedge fund, which manages more than $17 billion, gained around 6% in April, bolstering the returns, a person familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing performance. Rokos Macro Hedge Fund Returns Source: Investor document and Bloomberg reporting Note: 2024 returns are through April Rokos’s success comes amid a wild year for macro traders so far this year. Many of them found themselves wrong-footed by a broad recalibration in interest-rate expectations, which led to a selloff in US bonds. Those expecting aggressive reductions by the Federal Reserve were disappointed, while Rokos, who’s known for placing high conviction leveraged bets, profited from the market U-turn. The first quarter saw a wide range of returns across macro peers. Performance among global macro funds was the most widely dispersed of any strategy during the period, according to data from fund administrator Citco, with results for tracked hedge funds varying between -10% to north of +20%. Rokos, whose net worth is estimated at $1.8 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, runs one of the biggest macro hedge funds in the world. He co-founded  Brevan Howard Asset Management in 2002 before starting his own operation in 2015.

Read the press release on the Unlimited Hedge Fund Barometer - A Guide to Performance and Positioning of The Global Hedge Fund Industry. #hedgefunds #alpha #alternativestrategies https://lnkd.in/eVk96xVA

Are you wondering what is driving your performance? Discover how a 'Tiger Cub' hedge fund, with $Billions under management, was seeking a platform to better manage factor exposures across its portfolio. With institutional allocators emphasizing sophisticated factor criteria, the fund needed a solution that could provide an in-depth view of the factors driving their portfolio performance. Find out how in this case study: #alphastocks #fundamentalinvesting #custombaskets #riskmanagement #riskanalysis #portfoliooptimization

Hedge fund replication is getting mainstream with State Street Global Advisors announcing they are launching a hedge fund replication product shortly. While these sorts of products can be viewed as direct competitors to our work, the entire replication industry is still tiny in comparison to the 5tln AUM hedge fund industry suggesting there is *a lot* of room for everyone involved to gather assets leveraging these techniques. SSGA's entrance just further highlights how these products are getting increasing attention from the biggest asset managers. Why? Because clients don't want to have to keep paying 2&20 fees (or worse). https://lnkd.in/ewM9YKsv

A deep dive look at #hedgefunds allocating to, well, other hedge funds. With thoughts from Paloma, Boothbay and many others on this continuing trend that is both old and new. This story is part our hedge fund special report that you can access here: https://lnkd.in/emRgkviv https://lnkd.in/e35qvQ3p

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗷𝘂𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴... 🌴 With top hedge funds closing doors to new money ⛔️, traders from Citadel and Millennium are branching out, raising $14 billion this year alone—20 traders are launching their own funds in 2024. 📈 But an elite reputation doesn't guarantee success. Transitioning from a portfolio manager within a firm to running an independent fund is like starting from scratch, bringing higher performance uncertainty. ⚠️ 📊 Multi-strategy hedge funds excel by shifting capital across various tactics, outperforming the S&P 500 with much lower risk. Their solid performance in all market conditions drives strong investor demand, allowing them to charge hefty fees beyond the traditional '2/20' model—sometimes over 60% of gross profit! 💸 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀: Exorbitant fees 💸 and closing doors to new money ⛔️ create barriers. Meanwhile spin-offs of famous hedge funds come with higher performance uncertainty and still hefty fees. ⚠️ 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗢𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆: But there are alternatives. At Alquant, we've designed a strategy to mirror multi-strat hedge fund returns without the exorbitant costs. Alquant’s approach aims at capturing roughly 80% of the performance results by replicating key strategies—Trend, Carry, Relative Value, and more. Hence, overall it has the potential to deliver higher net performance while offering daily liquidity and no minimum investment requirements. Interested in smarter hedge fund alternatives? DM me to learn more. Source: https://lnkd.in/e-BfsMqg Inspiration: Harald Berlinicke

Event hedge fund primer: alpha from corporate catalysts Despite underperforming the broader hedge fund composite in H1 2024, event driven hedge funds have outperformed the hedge fund composite over the five and ten years to Jun-24*. Event driven hedge fund strategies capitalise on investment opportunities that arise from corporate events. The performance of an event driven manager depends on their ability to predict the outcome of corporate events accurately and to successfully manage the associated risks. In the next in Aurum’s series of hedge fund strategy primers, we explore event driven strategies in more detail, looking at: 🞄 the corporate events which event driven funds capitalise upon, 🞄 different event driven sub-strategies, 🞄 sample trades, 🞄 and how event driven funds perform in different market environments. Whether you're an experienced investor or new to hedge fund strategies, this piece provides valuable insights into how event driven funds work and the role that they can play in investors’ portfolios. Read the full primer here: https://bit.ly/3zc26aD *Source: Hedge fund industry performance deep dive – H1 2024. Aurum Hedge Fund Data Engine asset weighted average net returns. #hedgefunds #investments #assetmanagement #eventdriven