Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Per Gramstrup launched advisory firm Asset Advisor in January 2009 as a one-person boutique to advise and offer institutional clients access to his opportunistic multi-asset risk-on, risk-off strategy. Seeking to ensure the long-term continuity of the firm and the strategy, Gramstrup entered into a deal with portfolio manager Christian Munch Sand to sell a 10 percent stake in the company, with Sand becoming a partner in the process.
“This is something that Per and I have been discussing since I joined full-time, with the primary goal of ensuring the long-term continuity of the strategy and prospects of the firm,” says Sand. The six-member team at Aarhus-based Asset Advisor uses an active, dynamic and opportunistic multi-asset strategy with a continuous risk-on, risk-off approach to find the best opportunities in all asset classes and tradeable securities. Of the firm’s DKK 2.3 billion in assets under management, the majority (DKK 1.8 billion) consists of institutional mandates, with less than one-fourth allocated to its Danish alternative investment fund, Asset Opportunities, launched in late 2016.
“This is something that Per and I have been discussing since I joined full-time, with the primary goal of ensuring the long-term continuity of the strategy and prospects of the firm.”
“As we run an actively managed strategy, Per’s more than 35 years of experience offered an attractive learning curve and an ambitious future for me. This partnership helps me evolve and simultaneously secures the long-term continuity of the strategy and firm,” notes Sand. “I admire the unique way that Per has developed his strategy for handling the market, which combined with our very close client relationships, gives me the confidence to tie my career and future to this firm,” he emphasizes.
“This partnership helps me evolve and simultaneously secures the long-term continuity of the strategy and firm.”
The dynamic and opportunistic multi-asset strategy involves a continuous evaluation of the risk-on, risk-off sentiment in financial markets by relying on a combination of objective and subjective assessments. These assessments consider long-term trends, economic cycles, monetary policy, investor sentiment, asset flows, and, importantly, market participants’ behavior and biases. “This strategy offers a vast playing field for the portfolio management team, where it is crucial to be aware of one’s strengths and weaknesses in knowledge and decision making,” says Sand.
The objective and subjective assessments of where financial markets are heading help Gramstrup and his team build a risk-opportunity map. “We maintain a map of where we see risks and where we see opportunities in markets at all times,” previously explained Gramstrup. The team then employs both top-down and bottom-up analysis to identify the best opportunities in the market. “Every day when we go into the office, we need to decide if we need to increase or decrease risk, and then we determine the specific asset class and instruments through which we execute these decisions,” elaborates Sand. “The very dynamic aspect of the strategy is really interesting to me.”
“The very dynamic aspect of the strategy is really interesting to me.”
This dynamic and forward-looking approach to investing contributed to Asset Opportunities achieving a 16 percent return in the challenging market conditions of 2022, marking its best year since launching in late 2016. Up less than two percent in the first eleven months of 2023, Asset Opportunities’ risk-adjusted focus has generated an annualized return of 6.3 percent with a yearly standard deviation of 9.0 percent since inception. Reflecting on the year-to-date performance, Sand attributes the subdued results to the team’s cautiousness, noting, “The main reasons are that we have been a little bit too cautious on the risk and have been a little bit surprised about the resilience, especially of the US economy and the labor market there.”
