HEDGE FUNDS: 2 STRATEGIES WORKING IN 2013

Just as the various sectors of the stock market are subject to different performances over time, so fund strategies and styles of portfolio management differ over the investment cycle. This makes an investor's selection of managed funds, and particularly actively managed and alternative funds, vital to their portfolio performance.

The attached table shows the performance of each strategy in AFM's database over the past seven years, and highlights the inconsistency of performances, and as investors know well, that of financial markets in general.

There are a number of clear messages to take from this table in addition to the obvious one that the performance of the market itself is subject to extreme swings. Firstly, when the market performs strongly ('07, '09 and 2012) it outperforms most alternative or active strategies. However, when the market falls or performs badly, such as in 2008, 2010 and 2011, nearly all alternative and actively managed strategies perform better than the market.

This is logical and to be expected.  Generally non equity assets and markets are not correlated to the share market (although this didn't hold completely true during the GFC) and the "short" side of many hedge fund portfolios acts much like an insurance policy: When the market goes up and the short positions underperform, you don't need insurance even though you have paid for it, but when the market goes down the short insurance "pays" for itself.

It's not quite as simple as that of course, as the ability of many fund managers to reduce their overall market exposure by moving to cash in negative markets also provides a significant opportunity to avoiding risk.

Equally, different funds within each strategy can provide wide ranging performances depending on the skill and implementation of their respective portfolio managers. In the attached report, Chart 1 shows the performance range of individual funds over the past 12 months, with performances ranging from -50% to +75%.

Best Performing Strategies:

Taking the past 12 months the range of performances of differing strategies has once again been wide ranging, as can be seen from Chart 2 in the attached report.  Only two outperformed the strongly rising ASX200, but all the top performing strategies were equity based.

Over the past 12 months one strategy that has performed strongly is Equity Long, with an average performance of 26.37% benefitting from the broadly rising market. Some might question why "long only" funds are included in AFM's tables, but such funds generally have very concentrated, high conviction portfolios, some with only 15 or 20 positions, and many are able to adjust overall market exposure by holding significant cash exposure.

Equity 130/30 has performed even better with a performance over 12 months of +29.62%. Why? Because in equity 130/30 the manager short sells 30% of the portfolio by value, and uses the proceeds to increase their long exposure to 130%. Providing the stock selection is on target, the overweight long positions outperform the market, and the short positions either provide some protection, or add to performance if those stocks fall in value.

That's great in a rising market, but the opposite can occur if the market declines and the manager is locked into an overweight long exposure. This is clear when looking back over the seven year strategy performance table at the start of this article. Generally when the market falls, Equity 130/30 funds suffer more than the index and other equity funds as the leverage they provide magnifies the extent of the downside risk.

It is worth noting that there are variations to Equity 130/30 which AFM includes in the overall strategy category, such as 120/20 and 150/50. The logic and implementation tend to be the same, with the difference being the extent of the leverage or market exposure. Effectively these strategies all have fixed net exposures (calculated as their total long positions minus their shorts) of 100%, but with gross exposure (long plus short) of 140, 160 or 200%.

Critics of the 130/30 style argue that being locked into a fixed market exposure in all market conditions doesn't provide sufficient flexibility to dial the portfolio's risk levels either up or down as conditions change. However the strategy is gaining new followers amongst both fund managers and investors, particularly amongst previously long only advocates who are trying to find some risk mitigation in falling markets. Others argue that the leverage created by the gross exposure increases returns, but like all leverage also increases risk.

The alternative to Equity 130/30 is simply Equity Long/Short, which implies that the level of long, short, gross and net market exposure adjusts in line with the fund manager's view of the prevailing market and specific stocks. Normally these funds have a bias to the long side of the portfolio, but performances are governed by both their stock selection and overall market exposure. These funds make up the majority of the "actively managed" universe, both in Australia and overseas.

This in turn does create some bias in these performance tables as they are not adjusted for the weight of funds under management. Equally in those strategies with fewer funds the potential for statistical risk is greater. As always there's no substitute for research, and understanding each fund's investment strategy.

Chris Gosselin, Australian Fund Monitors ©

2 September 2013

Ph: 612+ 8007 6611

This article was written for the Eureka Report and published with permission on 2 September 2013

Attached is our most recently updated Fund Review on the BlackRock Multi Opportunity Fund.  

We would like to highlight the following aspects of the Fund:

• The Fund offers broad diversification across asset classes including equities, fixed income, currencies and commodities with an attractive risk profile, having provided double digit returns since 2009 with low volatility.
• BlackRock's Active Scientific involves extensive research into every aspect of the investment process starting with the identification of fundamental investment insights. These are thoroughly tested to ensure that the outcome consistently adds to performance: Quantitative analysis is also applied to balance both performance and risk ensuring the position is only taken when the potential for reward is adequate.  Only insights meeting this multi level process are implemented into portfolios.
• The current strategy has seen the Fund provided double digit returns with only two negative months since May 2010, leading to annualised returns over the past 36 months (to July 2013) of 12.81% and a three year Sharpe Ratio of 4.62, significantly outperforming targeted returns and risk.  

Sean Webster

Research and Database Manager
Australian Fund Monitors