{"id":27615,"date":"2013-03-11T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/news\/alternatives-proved-resilient-despite-mixed-signals-from-washington-and-rome\/"},"modified":"2013-03-11T01:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T00:00:00","slug":"alternatives-proved-resilient-despite-mixed-signals-from-washington-and-rome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/news\/alternatives-proved-resilient-despite-mixed-signals-from-washington-and-rome\/","title":{"rendered":"Alternatives proved resilient despite mixed signals from Washington and Rome"},"content":{"rendered":"

G3 dominance on world financial markets continued in
\nFebruary, this time raising investors\u2019 risk aversion.<\/strong> Worries
\nabout the impact of fiscal restraint on the U.S. economy and
\nthe disappointing results of the Italian elections that leave the
\ncountry in a political deadlock combined to put a halt on the
\nrally risky assets enjoyed in January. However performance
\nwas quite mixed. Eurozone equities suffered the most as
\nrecently published data kept suggesting weak fundamentals.
\nU.S. equities proved resilient, backed by a solid macro news
\nflow and Ben Bernanke\u2019s testimony which smoothed fears of a
\npremature shift in the Fed\u2019s QE regime. Japanese stocks
\nbuoyed by upward revisions in earnings and hopes that the
\nBoJ will turn to a more reflationary stance, seemed immune
\nand advanced further.<\/p>\n

While safe-haven sovereigns benefited from this bout of
\nrisk aversion<\/strong>, overall equity markets lost some ground and the
\nMSCI World index declined 0.2 % in USD terms.<\/p>\n

Managers remained constructive as evidenced by the
\nmarket beta exposure they chose to hold:<\/strong> the median equity
\nbeta on the Lyxor platform changed little recently at about
\n30%, a level comparable to those observed in the spring
\n2011, before the euro crisis.<\/p>\n

Noticeably, again this month L\/S equity market neutral funds
\nstand out as one of the best performing strategies<\/strong>, which
\nbrings year-to-date performance to 6.81%. Managers, that had
\nincreased leverage, took advantage of the opportunities offered
\nby the earnings season.<\/p>\n

The increased dispersion did offset the negative impact related
\nto the spike in volatility and benefited to alpha generators.<\/p>\n

Two Event Driven sub-strategies out of three were down in
\nFebruary<\/strong> with the Lyxor Special Situations and Distressed
\nSecurities indices losing 1.06% and 0.37% respectively over
\nthe month. Merger Arbitrage funds proved rather resilient with
\nan overall gain of 0.73% on the related Lyxor Index. The recent
\nresurgence in merger activity was mainly driven by industryspecific
\nevents which traded very tightly and had a limited
\nimpact on the P&L of dedicated arbitragers.<\/p>\n

L\/S Credit Arbitrage funds returned flat performance while
\ntheir Convertible Arbitrage peers slightly eroded over February
\nas the environment for credit markets turned more challenging,
\nwith spreads widening particularly in Europe.<\/strong> Though credit
\narbitragers generated positive alpha, they did not manage to
\nfully de-correlate from the negative backdrop. Investors\u2019
\nrenewed appetite for high grade sovereigns and tensions on
\nItalian debt benefited to managers in the fixed income and
\nglobal macro spaces. Yet, many of the global macro funds
\nposted losses over the month with commodities being a major
\ndetractor from performance. The Lyxor Global Macro Index
\ndeclined 0.74% in February.<\/p>\n

Sliding equity and commodity markets weighted the most
\non long term CTAs that had turned long equity.<\/strong> The Lyxor CTA
\nLong Term and Short Term indices lost in February 1.22% and
\n0.15% respectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe unexpected outcome of the Italian elections has hit
\nmany hedge fund managers this month but a full-blown
\nfinancial crisis is definitely not on their agenda \u201d<\/strong> says Stefan
\nKeller, Head of Managed Account Platform Research & External
\nRelations at Lyxor AM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Lyxor Hedge Fund Index was up +0.15% in February,
\nbringing year-to-date performance to +1.73%. 8 Lyxor
\nStrategy Indices out of 14 ended the month in positive
\nterritory, led by the Lyxor Fixed Income Arbitrage Index
\n(+2.06%), the Lyxor L\/S Equity Market Neutral (+1.65%) and
\nthe Lyxor L\/S Equity Variable Bias Index (+1.59%)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":27613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1470],"tags":[1687,1743,1655,1658,1690,1651,1437,1662,1672],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27615"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beta.next-finance.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}