Nordea’s Alpha 15 MA Fund, the highest-risk, highest-return strategy within Nordea’s three-fund Alpha range of risk premia solutions, celebrates its 15-year anniversary following a strong rebound in performance. After several challenging years, the second half of 2025 marked a turning point for the Alpha family, with Alpha 15 MA gaining more than 23 percent over the 12 months through the end of June.
Alpha 15 MA is part of Nordea’s three-member Alpha family, a range of multi-strategy, risk premia-based liquid alternative investment solutions managed by Nordea’s multi-asset investment team headed by Asbjørn Trolle Hansen. The investment process combines both risk-on premia, designed to perform in rising markets, and risk-off premia, intended to provide protection during market downturns. Around 30 individual risk premia strategies are grouped into several so-called “SuperStrategies,” which form the foundation of each portfolio. While all three funds share the same investment philosophy and underlying building blocks, they target different levels of risk and return to suit varying investor preferences.
Alpha 15 MA represents the most aggressive strategy within the range, targeting the highest long-term return potential alongside higher expected volatility. Following a difficult period that began in 2022, performance improved markedly in the second half of 2025. The recovery was largely driven by several enhancements to the portfolio construction framework, enabling a more efficient allocation of the fund’s risk budget and better alignment with the investment team’s convictions.
Among the key changes were splitting the former Equity Premia allocation into two separate SuperStrategies (namely, Low Risk Anomaly and Equity Long/Short), introducing a new sub-strategy within the Equity Long/Short bucket, and reorganizing the former Reversal Premia SuperStrategy. These refinements provided greater flexibility in allocating risk across the portfolio while strengthening the implementation of the team’s investment views.
The share class of Alpha 15 MA tracked by HedgeNordic was launched in mid-June 2011 and has generated an annualized return of 5.0 percent since inception, below its long-term target of 7-10 percent annualized returns. However, the strategy delivered annualized returns of 7.5 percent during its first decade through 2022, before several difficult years weighed on long-term performance. The strong rebound since the second half of 2025 has put the strategy back on a firmer trajectory.
The Alpha fund range currently oversees approximately €5.2 billion in assets, with Alpha 15 MA accounting for nearly €2.5 billion. With the portfolio construction enhancements now reflected in performance, the fund’s 15-year anniversary comes at a time when the strategy appears to have re-established the return profile it seeks to deliver.
