Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Two Nordics hedge funds – QQM Equity Hedge and Othania Invest – have been shortlisted for the HFM European Quant Performance Awards 2021. The event due to take place virtually on the evening of November 17 rewards and celebrates the best European quant hedge funds over the past year.
The winners of the HFM European Quant Performance Awards will be selected by a judging panel made up of institutional and private investors, as well as investment consultants. Each member of the panel will have an equal weight in choosing the winners in each category they are assigned. Funds shortlisted in the “alternative markets” and “multi-alternative risk premia” categories were required to submit a track record of at least 12 months ending June 2021, while funds entering any of the other categories were required to submit a minimum track record of three years. Long-term performance categories required a minimum track record of five years.
The members of the judging panel focus on absolute performance, as well as standard deviation of returns and outperformance of the relevant HFM benchmark to select the winners. They also take into consideration their relative asset size, nature of the investment strategy, track-records, other supporting materials and professional knowledge about shortlisted funds to come to their decisions.
QQM Equity Hedge
QQM Equity Hedge, which employs a systematic market-neutral strategy to capture the correlation between fundamental and equity prices, was shortlisted in the “quant equity” category alongside four other funds. “We very much appreciate the recognition of being nominated for the HFM Quant Performance Awards and regardless of the outcome, the work continues in seeking out the risk adjusted returns our investors require,” Ola Björkmo, the founder and current CEO of QQM Fund Management, comments on the nomination.
“We very much appreciate the recognition of being nominated for the HFM Quant Performance Awards and regardless of the outcome, the work continues in seeking out the risk adjusted returns our investors require.”
QQM Equity Hedge uses a systematic strategy to build a well-diversified market-neutral portfolio that aims to capture the effects of fundamental and price momentum in European equity markets. The fund managed by Ola Björkmo and Jonas Sandefeldt is built up of ten geographically dispersed market-neutral portfolios, which rely on “a combination of various fundamental momentum strategies with a price momentum overlay.” QQM Equity Hedge is up 6.4 percent in the first three quarters of this year. The fund ended 2020 down 4.2 percent despite booking a cumulative gain of 5.6 percent in the turbulent first quarter of the year.
Othania Invest
Othania Invest, which uses a quant-based risk-assessment model to allocate capital either into equity or bond exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on a monthly basis, has also been nominated at this year’s edition of the HFM European Quant Performance Awards. As previously explained by Othania founder Vincent Larsen, the model called Tiger decides on an all-in or all-out rotation of equities by “estimating whether risk levels in the stock market are rising or not for the coming month using leading indicators on economic activity, interest rates, and stock market movements.”
Othania Invest, the oldest of the three funds under the umbrella of Othania, gained about 9.0 percent in the first nine months of 2021. The fund was up 11.6 percent last year, followed by a 15.8 percent advance during 2019. Othania Invest has generated an annualized return of 10.0 percent since launching in early 2016.
Photo by Tyler Easton on Unsplash
