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Hedge funds have so far held up well in the global corona crisis. Individual strategies were able to achieve high profits due to the sharp rise in market volatility. The increasing regulation of sustainability will open up new playing fields for the industry in the future. These are the key results of the 9th FERI Hedge Fund Investment Day, which took place this year for the first time as an online conference.
The number of hedge funds has almost doubled in the last twelve years, and assets under management worldwide have risen above the EUR 3 trillion threshold for the first time in the course of 2020. Today, the asset class is more stable overall, partly because the industry has learned from the mistakes of the major financial crisis, investors around the world have invested heavily and structural changes have been initiated. "The Corona crisis has shown that investors with arbitrage strategies that speculate on price differences or the occurrence of certain events have generally been able to achieve better results, with less volatility, than the broad equity market," said Marcus Storr, Head of Alternative Investments at FERI. The flexibility and variability of the investment concepts will also prove to be an advantage when it comes to sustainability. The greater consideration of sustainability criteria demanded by politicians should give hedge funds an additional boost.
In general, hedge funds are well prepared for the challenges posed by the sustainability regime. Since there is no uniform sustainability standard for the investment industry, valuation inefficiencies are to be expected in this area, which hedge funds could use profitably. "Good hedge fund managers recognise pricing inefficiencies faster than the investment mainstream and capitalise on them. Legal regulation therefore acts as a new source of returns," says Storr. With the instrument of "short selling" the industry also has a strong incentive to uncover companies that violate corporate governance rules or even act fraudulently.
In times of low interest rates, institutional investors are increasingly looking for high-yield alternative investments. "Hedge funds are now an indispensable part of the allocation process for both private and institutional investors. The performance of hedge funds in 2020 shows that their strategies also work in the face of market distortions such as the corona crisis," said Dr. Dirk Rüttgers, Chairman of the Board of Management of Do Investment AG, Munich.
At the 9th FERI Hedge Fund Investment Day, institutional investors and portfolio managers discussed current developments in the hedge fund industry. Renowned hedge fund managers from Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Stamford/NY and Chicago gave an insight into their strategies.