Hedge Fund Focus: November 11, 2016
Obviously the week took a surprising turn here in the U.S. Tuesday night, overshadowing much of the industry news this week, but here are the quick things to be aware of:
There is an extremely high possibility that the Trump administration will dismantle Dodd-Frank.
Hedge fund closures are on track to outpace launches in 2016 and ETFs’ AUM has surpassed that of hedge funds’. High fees and mediocre performance were blamed for the shift to the low-cost offerings.
Strategies: Credit and event-driven strategies led the industry’s October gains; managed future strategies continued to be popular amongst investors; and computer-driven strategies took major hits as they were wrong-footed by bond bets.
Individual Managers: Ken Grifftin’s Citadel continued to post strong performance in October, with funds now up between 2 and 8 percent YTD; Brevan Howard posted slight gains for the month, paring back yearly losses; and Steve Cohen’s SAC cubs showed mixed Q3 performance.
Kentucky’s Retirement System has identified the 12 firms it will pull nearly half its hedge fund investments from. The reductions, which will be made by 2019, also extend to the pension’s hedge fund-of-fund investments.
Leon Cooperman is actually embroiled in not one, but two legal battles. In addition to the SEC’s insider trading investigation, iPayment Holdings is suing Omega Advisors over allegations it plotted to take over the debit and credit card payment processing company in a convoluted boardroom coup that has put firm’s financial health at risk.
Weekly Reads: There were a bunch of interesting reads this week that had nothing to do with the election:
- Institutional Investor wrote an in-depth piece on Och-Ziff’s bribery scandal and the nightmare it has created for Dan Och
- The Financial Times questioned the success of Steve Cohen’s second act, opining on if recent college graduates will want to join a firm that not too long ago was the poster child for insider trading
- FundFire explored the implications Carlyle’s retreat from the hedge fund industry will have on goliath asset managers and the limitations it signals
- Institutional Investor also looked at how the industry is selling active managers with mediocre performance