Month in Review – August 2019

Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Nordic hedge funds were down 0.4 percent on average in August (84 percent reported), the second negative month the Nordic industry has seen thus far in 2019. In August, Nordic CTAs recorded their best monthly performance year-to-date, whereas the four remaining strategy categories in the Nordic Hedge Index posted losses.

Four of the five strategy categories in the Nordic Hedge Index posted losses for August, with CTAs being the only group to post gains for the month. Nordic CTAs gained 2.9 percent on average last month and recorded their best summer on record. The group is up 7.3 percent year-to-date through the end of August. Equity hedge funds lost 1.4 percent on average last month, which trimmed their year-to-date performance to 2.8 percent.

Multi-strategy funds, this year’s second best-performing category in the Nordic Hedge Index with a year-to-date return of 5 percent, fell 0.6 percent in August. Fixed-income funds and funds of hedge funds were down 0.4 percent last month. Fixed-income funds gained 3.7 percent in the first eight months of 2019, whereas funds of hedge funds were down 0.1 over the same period.

The dispersion between last month’s best- and worst-performing members of the Nordic Hedge Index widened compared to the previous month. In August, the top 20 percent of hedge funds gained 4.1 percent on average, whereas the bottom 20 percent lost 4.8 percent on average. In the previous month, the top 20 percent was up 3.9 percent, and the bottom 20 percent lost 2.1 percent. Around 44 percent of all members of the Nordic Hedge Index with reported data for August posted gains last month.

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Estlander & Partners Alpha Trend II – Class P, a higher leverage version of systematic trend-following fund Estlander & Partners Alpha Trend, was last month’s best-performing member of the Nordic Hedge Index with a monthly gain of 18.7 percent. The August performance brought the fund’s year-to-date return to 34.3 percent and catapulted the fund to the leading position in the list of best-performing CTAs in the Nordics so far this year.

RPM Evolving CTA Fund was the second best-performing member of the Nordic Hedge Index last month with a gain of 9.6 percent, which brought its return for the first eight months of 2019 to 17.6 percent. Estlander & Partners Freedom, the most diversified vehicle of Estlander & Partners, followed suit with a 9.2 percent-gain in August, which brought the fund’s year-to-date performance further into positive territory at 10.1 percent. The Swedish-domiciled systematic fund Lynx (Sweden) advanced 8.4 percent last month and is up 29.3 percent year-to-date through the end of August. Systematic macro fund Peak Global Macro gained 7.2 percent in August, which brought its performance for 2019 into positive territory at 2.4 percent.

The Month in Review for August can be downloaded below:

Photo by Maddi Bazzocco on Unsplash