By Angela McDaniels
Tacoma, Wash., June 8 - Credit Suisse said that early estimates indicate that the Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge Fund index will record a gain of 3.61% for May.
The figure is based on 62% of assets reporting, according to a company news release.
Hedge fund managers posted positive returns across all major strategies in May except for Managed Futures, which were down 20 basis points. Credit Suisse said returns were driven by favorable investment conditions across equity, credit and commodities markets.
A positive trend in emerging markets was led by India and included industrial production numbers that were up in many parts of Asia, Credit Suisse said. The Purchasing Manager's Index in China expanded for a third month.
Some managers remained cautious, however, with the view that a switch from a government-led recovery to a consumer-led recovery may face hurdles such as the continuing rise of unemployment in many parts of the world, rising savings rates, overhangs in vacant housing and assorted weak macro data in Europe, according to the release.
Credit Suisse said that with spreads tightening and returns strong across the credit spectrum, relative value players such as Convertible Arbitrage and Fixed Income Arbitrage were among the best performers.
With a 19.4% year-to-date performance, Convertible Arbitrage outperformed the next best strategy by 6.9%, and the company said there was nearly $6 billion in new convertible bonds issuances in the United States for the month.
With fixed-income markets apparently unfazed by the General Motors Corp. bankruptcy, investment-grade financials had the strongest performance, Credit Suisse said, adding that investment-grade industrials, utilities and high yield also had a solid month, as did leveraged loans.
The Treasury yield curve, meanwhile, hit a record steepness on May 27 with the spread between two-year and 10-year Treasuries widening to 276 bps. The company said managers benefited from positions such as corporate negative basis trades (long bonds versus credit default swaps), long financials exposure, swap curve steepeners and long-dated municipal bonds.
Global Macro continued to have the longest positive streak of the strategies in the index for the seventh consecutive month.
Managed Futures' performance improved over April, but it posted a fifth consecutive month of negative returns.
Strategy estimates are included in the table below. The final results for May will be published June 15.
The index is published by Credit Suisse Tremont Index LLC, which is a New York-based joint venture company of Credit Suisse Index Co., Inc. and Tremont Group Holdings, Inc.
Strategy estimates
| Index/sector | May | April | Year to date
|
| Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge Fund index | 3.61% | 1.68% | 6.25%
|
| Convertible Arbitrage | 6.03% | 4.52% | 19.38%
|
| Dedicated Short Bias | 0.97% | Negative 9.57% | Negative 7.63%
|
| Emerging Markets | 7.04% | 5.17% | 12.52%
|
| Equity Market Neutral | 5.06% | 1.29% | 2.71%
|
| Event Driven | 4.31% | 1.48% | 5.66%
|
| Distressed | 3.09% | 1.80% | 3.75%
|
| Event Driven Multi-Strategy | 4.99% | 1.27% | 6.70%
|
| Risk Arbitrage | 0.45% | 0.72% | 3.94%
|
| Fixed-Income Arbitrage | 6.45% | 1.93% | 12.05%
|
| Global Macro | 1.52% | 0.19% | 4.33%
|
| Long/Short Equity | 4.14% | 2.54% | 7.12%
|
| Managed Futures | Negative 0.20% | Negative 3.24% | Negative 6.22%
|
| Multi-Strategy | 4.30% | 2.24% | 10.52%
|
| MSCI World | 8.62% | 10.90% | 5.41%
|
| Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond index | 3.57% | 0.90% | 1.10%
|
| Dow Jones AIG Commodities index | 13.00% | 0.73% | 6.65%
|
© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere.
For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.
