Hedge funds posted their second consecutive month of gains, up 0.33 per cent in May and 0.48 per cent year-to-date.
Performance has varied sharply with small to medium sized hedge funds delivering gains while funds managing in excess of USD500 million in assets seeing losses of 0.34 per cent with their sub-group of billion dollar hedge funds declining 0.88 per cent in May.
Total hedge fund assets grew by USD26.4 billion over the past five months, which compares with a growth in total AUM of USD92.9 billion over the same period last year. Investors have been selective in their allocations across strategies with long/short equities and macro hedge funds seeing stronger subscriptions year-to-date.
Assets under management for CTAs have shrunk by 7.13 per cent in 2018 as underlying managers posted their fourth consecutive month of investor redemptions with net outflows totalling USD8.4 billion. Managers have posted performance-based losses of USD13.9 billion as of May 2018 year-to-date; the highest performance-based loss among all strategic mandates.
Asset base for the USD1.65 trillion North American hedge fund industry grew by USD17.3 billion over the year, with most of this growth attributed to investor allocations of USD19.4 billion year-to-date, while performance-based losses totalling USD2.1 billion were recorded.
Assets under management for the funds of hedge funds industry has dipped below the USD400 billion mark to end at USD397 billion as of 2018 year-to-date. To contextualise, this is almost 50 per cent below their high point of USD808 billion reached in 2007. The average fund of hedge fund has returned 3.18 per cent annualised over the last five years net of fees.
