Dan Sundheim’s D1 Shakes Off Its $4 Billion Reddit-Fueled Fiasco (Bloomberg)
It was the kind of moment that would normally sink a hedge fund: Dan Sundheim was on Zoom, apologizing to clients for losing $4 billion in a single month. He ticked off strategy changes, noted he wasn’t going to dock his team’s pay and then headed back to work. Now, mere weeks later, the episode is behind him. Sundheim has recouped about 90% of what he lost in January when retail investors attacked his short bets on the likes of GameStop Corp. That recovery has put his D1 Capital Partners back into one of the most rapid ascents ever seen in money management.
AQR has Lost More than a Third of its Assets Since the End of 2017, But Cliff Asness’ Firm had a Big First Quarter (Business Insider)
Quants had a tough 2020, but Cliff Asness‘ AQR has been struggling longer than that owing to a long drought for its value-focused strategies. But a person close to the firm said the money manager is turning things around this year. The Greenwich-based systematic manager, which runs a number of hedge funds and mutual funds, has lost more than a third of its assets — nearly 38% — since the end of 2017, according to a report prepared by consultant Callan for the Marin County Employees’ Retirement Association.
Hedge Fund Assets Hit Record $3.8 Trillion in First Quarter (Reuters)
TORONTO (Reuters) – Global hedge fund assets rose to more than $3.8 trillion in March 2021, driven by the best first-quarter performance in 21 years and more investors putting cash to work with the industry, according to data from Hedge Fund Research (HFR). Hedge funds added another $201 billion and gained an average of 6% in the first three months of the year, according to the data.
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Hedge Fund Performance Update: March 2021 (Preqin)
The Preqin All-Strategies Hedge Fund benchmark returned +2.32% in March, building on February’s 3.12% gain and pushing the 12-month return to +41.52%. This heatmap presents the hedge fund performance benchmarks for March 2021. Plus, the YTD and 12-month returns for all top-level strategies, structures, denominations, and size classifications.
U.S. Long/Short Hedge Fund Bets on Return of Value Stocks (Opalesque)
From the March downturn through the end of 2020, growth stocks delivered a 1.5x greater return than their value counterparts. In 2021, the tables have turned: value stocks are pulling away to lead the market while the growth sector is nearly flat YTD, reports Nasdaq. March 2021 also marks the first time in months where daily volume in the S&P 500 Value ETF (IVE) was higher than that of IVW, its growth counterpart, indicating interest is shifting into value stocks and related funds. From 2010 to 2020, the Russell 1000 Growth Index delivered an annualized return of around +17%, while the Russell 1000 Value Index annualized about +10%. But the growth index’s outperformance largely comes from technology stocks.
Best Nordic Equity Hedge Fund 2020 (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Accounting for more than one-third of the Nordic hedge fund industry, equity hedge funds face fierce competition in the race for the title of the “Best Nordic Equity Hedge Fund” at the Nordic Hedge Award. The wide range of approaches and varying degrees of net market exposure employed by these players make this contest more exciting and unpredictable. At 15:00 CET on Wednesday, HedgeNordic announced the winners and runners-up in the “Best Nordic Equity Hedge Fund” category supported by Northern Trust.
Hedge Fund Assets Soar to All-Time High, Fueled by Record Gains and Booming Investor Confidence (Hedge Week)
Global hedge fund industry assets swelled to a new record high of USD3.8 trillion in the first three months of 2021, as managers recorded their strongest quarter since 2000 and investors duly poured more capital into a broad selection of strategy types, with the biggest hedge funds still taking the largest slice of client money. Hedge Fund Research estimates that net asset inflows from allocators reached about USD6.1 billion between the start of January and the end of March. That brought total net new inflows since Q3 2020 to USD22.1 billion.
Quant Shops Show Performance Variances (Green Street)
Quantitative managers continue to show wide dispersions in their performance, preserving a trend that took hold in 2020. But even with returns all over the map, there’s little doubt that the group as a whole fared far better in the first quarter of 2020 than it did amid the coronavirus-related disruptions of a year earlier. Indeed, the HFRI Equity Hedge Quantitative Directional Index was up 3.1% from Jan. 1 to March 31, versus a 10.7% loss for the same period in 2020. Among the gainers was a $1.25 billion vehicle run by Hong Kong-based Qube Research & Technologies, with a first-quarter profit of 10.3%. That built on a full-year 2020 rise of 39%.
