Preqin reports that the top 100 hedge fund managers have combined assets under management of $1.4 trillion, which accounts for 61 percent of total hedge fund capital. This compares with the recently published Hedge Fund 100 ranking by Institutional Investor’s Alpha, which counted total assets among the 100 largest firms at $1.3 trillion. That figure represents roughly 58 percent of the $2.25 trillion in total hedge fund assets worldwide at the start of 2013. Preqin, a London-based collector of data on alternative investments, also counts 176 institutions that have allocated at least $1 billion to hedge funds, 26 more than last year. These investors account for more than $550 billion invested with hedge funds, according to Preqin.
In its report, Preqin notes that over the next two months, the $7.2 billion Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System, which now allocates about 20 percent of its total assets to various hedge fund strategies, plans to make six new hedge fund investments. Preqin says the pension system is targeting direct investments in commingled multistrategy hedge funds and will consider managers on a case-by-case basis. Dutch asset management firm MN, which allocates 5 percent of its 90 billion euro assets under management to 27 hedge funds, plans to make four new investments over the next year. Strategies under consideration include managed futures/CTA, macro and equity market neutral.
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An excerpt from a soon-to-be-published book by a former hedge fund manager highlighting rampant use of cocaine, booze and prostitutes could rock the hedge fund industry like “Liar’s Poker” celebrated the over-the-top antics of Wall Street traders during the 1980s. The book, “The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader’s Tale of Spectacular Excess,” was written by Turney Duff, who worked for the hedge fund firm Galleon Group years before its founder, Raj Rajaratnam, went to prison for insider trading.
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Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors has taken a 5.1 percent passive stake in Macquarie Infrastructure, which owns a portfolio of infrastructure businesses.
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Macro traders were rocked again Thursday when the Japanese stock market slumped more than 5 percent. This was the third huge drop in the Nikkei 225 in a week. The big question, of course, is whether this big trend — as the managed futures players like to call it — is over and will go down in history as just a fleeting rally, or will it resume its rapid runup?
