Funds Hub
Money managers under the microscope
from Global Investing:
The only game in town
The extent of the surge to Japan by equity investors is written in sparkly 50-foot-high neon letters by the latest flows data out from Lipper.
We all know that Abenomics has, thus far, cast a spell over markets; the Nikkei is up about 80 percent since the middle of November, when Shinzo Abe first started looking like a bona fide challenger to win power. But it is still startling to see how flows into Japan have dominated investment behaviour.
In April alone, Japan equity funds and ETFs accounted for $9.1 billion of net inflows in a month when total net inflows across all sectors was just $9.9 billion. The money pouring into the Tokyo markets was also more than three times greater than the net inflows at the next best sector. Add the Japan Small and Midcaps sector as well as Asia Pacific funds (heavily weighted to Japan) and April net inflows inspired by the BOJs aggressive monetary policy easing reach $11.2 billion.
On a three month view, the figures show a similar trend, with Japan equity fund net inflows at $17.9 billion, much more than double the inflows enjoyed by the next best sector.
Gerard Fitzpatrick: Positive on global growth
Guest blogger Gerard Fitzpatrick is portfolio manager at Russell Investments, where he runs a $5 billion global bond fund.
The views expressed here are entirely the author’s own and do not constitute Reuters point of view.
Morning Line-up: Japanese ETFs, UK non-doms, Swiss hedge fund
News and views on the asset management industry from Reuters and elsewhere:
U.S. investors place record wager on Japanese funds – New York Times
UK wealth industry relief at new rules on non-doms – Reuters
Morning Line-Up: Libya and Madoff, hedge funds in North Africa, China in Japan
News and views on the asset management industry from Reuters and elsewhere
Libyan state fund rejected Madoff offer – FT
Hedge funds wary of punts on North Africa chaos – Reuters
China’s stealth investments in Japan – WSJ
Morning Line-Up: Japanese hedge, Madoff, Calpers helps probe
News and views on the asset management industry from Reuters and elsewhere:
Japan leads hedge funds return league – Reuters
Madoff says hedge funds, banks knew of his Ponzi scheme – NYT
Yen? Too late.
European investors have missed the boat if they wanted to adjust their portfolio to take advantage of a rising yen as the currency has peaked, says BNP Paribas Asset Management’s Hubert Goye.
You can watch his interview with Reuters Insider here: http://link.reuters.com/ket58n
Morning line-up: Greek crisis, Japan’s public pension fund
Hedge funds see Greek debt crisis spread - WSJ
European Monetary Fund debate overlooks real problems - Citywire
World’s biggest pension fund remains conservative – Reuters
Edward Cartwright: New dawn for Japanese hedge funds
Edward Cartwright is head of business development at alternative investment manager LGT Capital Partners in London. The firm runs $18 bln in hedge fund and private equity assets.
The views expressed here are entirely the author’s own and do not constitute Reuters point of view.
Phone home
Spare a thought for quant-heavy hedge fund firm BlueCrest.
The company’s systematic trading funds rely on the supercooled servers that crunch the numbers to run their, hopefully money-making, algorithms, so it must have come as quite a shock when their Japanese hardware was put under lock and key when Lehman bit the dust.
One year on and the firm is still waiting for a postcard. BlueCrest traders have even started calling the imprisoned server ‘ET’, after the castaway alien in Steven Speilberg’s teary blockbuster.
