HSBC’S Global Macro Fund celebrates third anniversary
The HSBC GIF Global Macro Fund this month celebrates its three-year anniversary by reaching more than US$660m (€536.6m) in assets under management while delivering consistent performance since launch.
Launched on 18 June 2007, the fund - an absolute return, UCITS III portfolio - has been co-managed by Guillaume Rabault and Jim Dunsford since inception.
The HSBC GIF Global Macro Fund was one of the first UCITS III alternative funds to launch and today has grown to over $660m (€536.6m).
The macro investment strategy of the fund allows it to tap into the strongest performing markets across the globe where it invests in a wide variety of liquid asset classes including cash, equities, bonds and currencies worldwide.
In its investment approach, the HSBC GIF Global Macro Fund seeks out pricing anomalies which it can exploit using complementary quantitative and qualitative based strategies.
The management team aims to deliver stable absolute returns in excess of 1-month Euribor (the fund's hurdle mark) which have a low correlation to major asset classes. Since inception, the fund's realised correlation with global equities is 0.11 and the Sharpe ratio is 0.96.
Over the past three years to June 18, 2010, the total fund's total return is 18.84%, in Euro terms, while the Euribor 1M has returned 7.81%. Over the same period the MSCI World Total Return Index fell by 20.38%.
The team particularly distinguished itself with its consistent approach during the turmoil of 2008. While world markets collapsed, Rabault and Dunsford delivered cumulatively positive performance, posting 10.07% for the year, while the Euribor 1M delivered 4.27% and the MSCI World Total Return fell by 37.64%. (Past performance is not a guide to future returns).
Commenting on the fund's three-year anniversary, Jim Dunsford said: "Despite contending with an abundance of market volatility since the fund's launch, our performance over the past three years has been consistent and conditions continue to present investment opportunities.
"In the current challenging environment we intend to keep our exposure to the highest quality assets which we believe will benefit in the long term despite market volatility."
Guillaume Rabault added: "We are grateful to our investors who have supported our conservatively constructed strategy. It is gratifying to see more investors - both individuals and institutions - allocating to our fund. Our history thus far gives us added confidence in the benefits of our diversified approach to managing the HSBC GIF Global Macro fund."
The strategies that Rabault and Dunsford employ, can be either market-neutral exploiting valuation differences across a given asset class or directional. The team also analyses cross-asset class opportunities as well.
Exposure to the different asset classes is primarily achieved by taking long and short positions in financial derivative instruments (such as equity futures, options, bond futures, credit default swaps, currency forwards and non-deliverable currency forwards).