Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – A new fund is joining the Nordic hedge fund arena in early May. Founded and managed by Pontus Dackmo and Carl Gustafsson, Protean Select is a long-biased equity hedge fund set to launch on May 2, shortly after the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority approved its fund prospectus.
“Here we go! Protean Select is launching on the 2nd of May,” Pontus Dackmo announces on LinkedIn. “Visualizing that 20-year track record laid out ahead, it’s fun to ponder it starts at a single point. This point: May 2, 2022,” writes Dackmo in a partner letter. “While I shouldn’t get too high-minded about it – after all, funds start and close all the time, we haven’t exactly invented penicillin – I do admit to being both a little proud and slightly nervous.”
“Visualizing that 20-year track record laid out ahead, it’s fun to ponder it starts at a single point. This point: May 2, 2022.”
Protean Select is a returns-focused hedge fund employing a long/short approach to invest in Nordic equities. “We do not subscribe to a particular investment philosophy. It’s therefore somewhat of a challenge to characterize the fund in simple terms,” explains Dackmo in the latest partner letter. “The best description I can come up with is we look for asymmetric opportunities: significant upside and acceptable downside, moderate upside and small downside, limited upside and no downside.”
“We do not subscribe to a particular investment philosophy. It’s therefore somewhat of a challenge to characterize the fund in simple terms.”
Dackmo focused on institutional sales of Nordic equities since 2005 and worked at several large banks and brokers such as ABG Sundall Collier, Danske Bank, Nordea and SEB in London and Stockholm. He also worked as Portfolio Manager at Nordea Asset Management and started a family office before launching Protean Funds in 2022. Dackmo will manage Protean Select with Carl Gustafsson, who most recently worked as a portfolio manager at Didner & Gerge.
“Our portfolio will consist of three Nordic buckets on the long side,” writes Dackmo. One third of the long portfolio will consist of higher quality core large-cap companies with limited cyclicality and high returns on capital employed. “One third small and midcap with room to grow significantly bigger over time, and one third opportunistic special situations,” he continues. The short side of the portfolio will mainly consist of market hedges “with an aim to limit drawdowns and hopefully improve compounding,” according to Dackmo. “It will have an opportunistic bucket of single-stock shorts, where and when we feel something is amiss and “obvious” (it seldom is).”
