Overly Ambitious Return Target?

Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Danish entrepreneur, author and investor Lars Tvede, who has launched his theme-based macro-focused hedge fund Atlas Global Macro, hopes to generate an average annual return in the range of 15 percent to 30 percent over time. Danish finance professors believe Tvede’s objective is too ambitious.

“We don’t want to legally commit on a return target, but I would be happy if we deliver between 15 to 30 percent per year on average over time,” Tvede, a Dane living out of Switzerland, told HedgeNordic in an interview earlier this year. “That would reflect what I have done for myself in the past,” said the Dane, who decided to set up a hedge fund business to leverage his own success in macro-based investing over the years. “This is a range that I would feel this is working for us.”

“We don’t want to legally commit on a return target, but I would be happy if we deliver between 15 to 30 percent per year on average over time.”

Carsten Tanggaard, a professor of finance at Aarhus University, calls Tvede’s non-binding return ambitions “either completely hopelessly optimistic, marketing hot air or an indication that he will take an awful lot of risk on behalf of investors,” according to Danish newspaper Børsen. “Or he is exceptionally good, but customers have no chance of knowing in advance,” Tanggaard tells Børsen. “Historical returns are just as interesting as last week’s lottery numbers – completely and fundamentally uninteresting.”

“Historical returns are just as interesting as last week’s lottery numbers – completely and fundamentally uninteresting.”

Tvede, who co-founded several ventures such as forecasting companies Supertrends and Supertrends Institute and who authored 17 books on business cycles, psychology, trading psychology and other topics, launched his Luxembourg-domiciled hedge fund Atlas Global Macro with over 150 million under management. As previously explained by Tvede, “Atlas Global Macro is a global macro-focused fund based on themes, employing a long-term-oriented and directional approach with an overlay of a tactical approach.”