The top hedge fund performers this year have been BTG Pactual Distressed Mortgage Fund, Pine River Fixed Income, and BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK)’s Obsidian Fund with returns above 31 percent. Other famous names in the top performers are Third Point Ultra, Kinetics Fund, and Omega Overseas Partners, According to the latest HSBC’s Holdings plc (LON:HSBA) (NYSE:HBC) Hedge Weekly.
There are a number of European, Asian, and EM focused funds in the top 20 performers. The lowest performance year to date was shown by Conquest Macro Fund (-27.5), Paulson Advantage Plus Fund (-18.5), and Moore Emerging Equity (-18.1). Some of the other names in the laggers are, Beach Horizon Fund, SR Global Fund, Winton Evolution Fund. Paulson and Blue Sky Japan have been consistent laggers since 2011.
Senvest Partners Class A fund, which was down 34 percent last year, and is now up 21 percent for the year so far and managed to earn a place in the top 20 hedge funds.
Best and Worst Strategies
In terms of strategy, Convertible Arbitrage is up 5 percent on average in all regions. The Credit Long/Short strategy was most successful in the US, with an average 15 percent gain, while Global and EM Credit L/S funds returned 8 percent and 7 percent respectively. The highest gaining strategy was Distressed Securities, with US focused funds returning 19.6 percent on average.
The Equity Long/Short funds returned over a large spectrum. The US Pharma/Biotech equity focused funds were able to return as high as 13.9 percent. Financial equity L/S funds gained 8.98 percent. Diversified EM equity oriented funds gained on the margins of 2 percent YTD, while European counterparts were up 7 percent on average. On the other hand, global technology focused funds were down by 1.4 percent, while the US tech funds gained only 1.5 percent.
Macro focused funds returned positive performance on the borderline, with gains of 3 percent on average. The most unsuccessful strategy for the year has been Managed Futures. All categories of this strategy; Currency, Discretionary, Systematic, and Multi Strategy, were down in all regions.
UPDATE: We have just confirmed that GlenRock is down -8.51% YTD as of October 31st and therefore should not be on the list.
