Absolute Returns

Volatility regimes are decisive for most investment approaches, particularly hedge funds. For both top down players (CTAs, Global Macro, FI Sovereign Arb.) and bottom-up strategies (L/S Equity, Event Driven, Credit Arb.), volatility deeply influence their universe and the trendiness of opportunities.

Going forward, our stance remains defensive on equities, in particular on European, Japanese and EM markets (UW). In the space of alternative strategies, we prefer Market Neutral L/S vs. Directional L/S, despite the fact that the latter has adopted a cautious stance in portfolios and was quite resilient in August.

Despite massive headwinds from trade tensions, Brexit deadlock and the manufacturing recession, asset prices have been incredibly buoyant so far this year. But as we head into Q4 2019, the sky starts to fill with clouds. We believe the balance of risks is highly asymmetric and turn more risk adverse, with hedge funds as a possible way to navigate the uncertainty looming on the horizon.

Timing CTAs is notoriously challenging. Monitoring their exposures provides a useful picture but has rarely been a reliable allocation method. They enjoyed an impressive rally this year, mainly supported by their long bond positions, which fueled high CTAs returns’ auto-correlations.

A spectacular momentum crash unfolded since late August, caused by the bounce back in sovereign bond yields. Within equity markets, value stocks experienced an impressive rebound while momentum stocks fell strikingly.