Funds Hub
Money managers under the microscope
Staying long
The mammoth rally we had in Q2 may be starting to falter — the FTSE 100 is now below 4,200, having hit 4,500 last month — but Octopus’s David Crawford is sticking with a 60 percent net long position.
Crawford made part of his Absolute Return Ucits III fund’s 71.1 percent return (since launch last March) by shorting stocks in 2008 and by going net long four months ago.
And while the recent downturn is painful, Crawford says he “wouldn’t want to sell” at these levels.
He believes equities in general are good value and price in most of the disappointing economic news to come, while short ideas are hard to find.
Odey’s Barclays boost
There’s nothing like backing up your stock market calls with a nice healthy profit, and Crispin Odey has done just that, revealing a 27.74 percent return in April from his European fund.
Having last month said the rally in equities could turn into a new bull market and having recently tucked away a few banks into his portfolio (after last year making money shorting banks), Odey has profited from the astonishing recovery over the past two months in Barclays shares, which alone accounted for nearly half the fund’s return last month.
Saving Hendry? Thanks but no thanks, says Hugh
It was always unlikely that a letter of advice was going to change the mind of maverick hedge fund manager Hugh Hendry.
And in his latest letter to investors, Hendry has smartly rebuffed any attempt to ‘save’ him from his bond investments.
Light at the end of the tunnel?
There’s no shortage of bad news in the financial world at the moment.
But one top hedge fund manager believes that equities could soon be heading for a very sharp rally.
Cazenove’s Neil Pegrum — whose fund made 9.4 percent last year while markets were plummeting — believes UK equities could soon be enjoying a “March 2003″ rally.
