Fri Jan 6, 2012 5:04am EST
HONG KONG Jan 6 (Reuters) – Singapore-based hedge
fund Quantedge Capital aims to double assets to $400 million by
end of 2012 after a 32 percent gain in its global macro fund
last year, a top executive said on Friday.
The return came in a tough year for peers, with hedge funds
down about 4 percent and global macro funds down about 2 percent
in 2011, data from industry tracker Eurekahedge showed.
Macro hedge funds focus on major economic trends and events
and bet anywhere they see value, including in stocks, bonds,
currencies, commodities and derivatives markets.
“Most of the year’s returns came from our bond portfolio,
offsetting the slight losses in our equities and commodities
portfolio,” Leow Kah Shin, who co-founded Quantedge in 2006,
said in an email to Reuters.
The hedge fund earned most of its money in April, July and
October when it produced double-digit returns, according to a
letter to investors seen by Reuters.
Quantedge Global Fund uses quantitative models to pick
trades. Its return follows an 82 percent gain in 2010, which has
led to the fund increasing assets by more than 2-1/2 times to
$207 million at the end of December last year.
The assets have grown from about $5 million in 2007.
Leow said Quantedge’s strategy could manage more than $1
billion as it invested in liquid instruments and he did not plan
to soft-close the fund at the moment.
“However, we are only accepting subscriptions from
like-minded investors, i.e. those who are able to handle our
volatility in exchange for really high long-term returns,” he
said.
Leow, who worked in Bermuda as a reinsurance pricing actuary
for Max Re Capital, set-up Quantedge with Chua Choong Tze, who
worked as a consultant scientist for Applied Predictive
Technologies in Virginia, United States.
