Stone Mountain Capital - Alternative Investment Advisory Solutions - Research

Alternative Markets Update Q3 2019

24/10/2019

After strong gains during H1 2019, hedge funds remained more or less at the same level in Q3 2019. In July and August, the performance of our strategies rose about by 0.40% each, while declining in September by approximately 1.20%. When comparing the YTD of Q3, shown in Figure 1, with the results from Q2, our credit strategies gained about 1.5% and is currently at 3.61%. The equity strategies dropped by around 2.6% to a YTD of 10.14%. Tactical trading strategies suffered the most with a loss of more than 10%. However, these strategies were still the most profitable as of Q3 2019 with a YTD of 23.24%. Lastly, the fund of hedge fund strategies fell about 0.6%, currently at a YTD of 6.16%. When looking at the strategies individually, Bitcoin Altcoin Actively Managed remains at the top with a YTD of 128%, despite losses in the last three consecutive months. The Discretionary Global Macro strategy performed exceptionally well in July and August, resulting in a YTD of 58.62%.

The equity strategies suffered in the last month, however, the Long-only US Equities High Conviction and Long/Short US Equities Disruptive Technologies still have a YTD of 20.72%, 18% respectively. Our volatility strategy achieved a YTD of 15.93% and never dipped below -0.5% on monthly performance level.

Overview of Performance of Different Hedge Fund Strategies: September 2019, Source: Stone Mountain Capital Research

2019 Q3 Hedge Fund Performance of our Strategies compared with Benchmarks, Source: Stone Mountain Capital Research

Alternative Markets Update And Macro Outlook September 2019

14/9/2019

Hedge funds achieved a performance of 0.31% in August 2019, despite the continuously increasing unstable economic environment. Brexit is getting more chaotic with the suspension of the UK parliament and a newly created law, which forcing the PM to delay Brexit to 2020. A general election was denied twice. The trade war between China and the US tightens further with the new tariffs on consumer goods. Furthermore, the conflict in Hongkong does not seem to end very soon either. Aside from political problems, the current economic situation with diminishing yields of fixed income and the inverted yield curve in UK and the US does certainly not help. Despite these developments in the fixed income market, our strategies have yielded an 0.80% gain in July. Alternative assets getting further boosted by pension funds, as they are looking for yields, due to the current fixed income market situation. Bitcoin was more or less stable over the last month. However, the interest in Bitcoin surely did not decline, as for example China starts its own cryptocurrency and Bitfinex issuing

leveraged trading on Bitcoin and Ethereum with 100x. There may be several drivers for this development, such as its increased acceptance as well as its market development during the year. The Bitcoin Altcoin Actively Managed strategy achieved the best YTD performance of all strategies on our platform. Another key driver might be, that investors seek uncorrelated assets, for which cryptocurrencies are ideal investments, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Correlation of Different Asset Classes When Comparing Weekly Returns from Q2 2016 to Q2 2019, Source: Binance Research Report: Bloomberg

Alternative Markets Update And Macro Outlook August 2019

28/8/2019

Alternative Markets Update August 2019

The hedge fund industry experienced a decline since its performance of H1 2019. However, the performance remains positive with both of our cross-asset indices achieving a gain of 0.41% in July. The decline of interest rates worldwide helps to increase the attractivity of hedge funds in a currently highly unstable economic environment. Our best performing strategies have not changed, since the last month. Bitcoin Altcoin Actively Managed is still the best performing strategy in 2019 with a YTD of 167.90%, despite the loss of 20.40% in July 2019. The Discretionary Global Macro strategy achieved a YTD of 39.24%, followed by three US equity strategies, incl.

Long/Short US Equities Disruptive Technologies, Long-only US Equities High Conviction and Equities US Activist Event Driven.

Alternative Markets Outlook H2 2019 and Macro Outlook August 2019

13/8/2019

Alternative Markets Outlook H2 2019

The asset management industry experienced significant declines in 2018. Alternative assets achieved the best performance among non traditional long asset classes. The popularity of actively managed assets is decreasing for the last 15 years, while passive solutions and alternatives are gaining more attention, which is likely to continue. It is expected that the industry will experience more volatile markets, increased competition and more economic uncertainty. Especially the uncertainties will increase, for example how the US-Chinese trade war will develop, with the background of new elections in the US in 2020. Europe's uncertainty will peak on how Brexit is executed at the end of October.

Hedge Funds

Hedge funds remain strong in July after a very profitable H1 2019 and reached a new record level of market capitalization of $3.273tn. In July, hedge funds yielded positive results again. The aggregated average performance of hedge in the current year is at 7.67%, which is likely to continue. Figure 1 shows the performance of several hedge fund strategies. Noteworthy is that none of them generated negative return. The interest rate cut of the FED is likely to increase the attractiveness of hedge funds further.

Investors are currently moving cash from equity strategies to lower beta strategies, as equity markets have reached all-time highs. For H1 2019, targeted strategies were mostly credit multi-strategy and relative value arbitrage strategies. However, this shifted to macro, CTA, currency and commodity funds in July 2019 and is likely to continue during H2 2019. Despite the trade war between the US and China, the allocated capital from hedge funds in China increased further. This conflict is likely to shape the general performance of financial markets, especially in the hedge fund industry. Due to current and expected interest rate decisions from most central banks as well as the volatility of currencies, hedge funds are looking for safe havens. Gold is experiencing an increased demand, causing the price per ounce to rise to the highest level since 2016 and $1600 or even $2000 is forecasted from major US investment banks.

Figure 1: Performance of Different Hedge Fund Strategies from June 2018 to June 2019: August 2019, Source: FundMap

Alternative Markets Update H1 2019

30/7/2019

Alternative Markets Update H1 2019

Hedge Funds
After the difficulties for hedge funds in 2018, 2019 started strong, despite the current uncertainties, such as the Brexit, the European elections and the trade war. Only in May, there were some difficulties. This short downturn was offset and more than compensated in June, which yielded extraordinary results. Our best performing strategy was the cryptocurrency strategy, followed by US equity disruptive technology and US equity high conviction. The best performing asset class was tactical trading, which achieved a 30.78% YTD, as shown in figure 1. Furthermore, all strategies had positive return in H1 2019.

Figure 1: Overview of Performance of Different Hedge Fund Strategies: June 2019, Source: Stone Mountain Capital Research

Alternative Markets Update July 2019

12/7/2019

Alternative Markets Update July 2019

Hedge funds have achieved their best half year within the last decade, despite the controversies about hedge funds in the last year. Hedge funds overall have gained 5.7% since January 2019. Especially the month June was profitable, as hedge fund managers achieved a performance of 1.82%, which originates from a strong equity market. As of the beginning of July, only the long volatility strategy yielded negative returns, while the equity long bias strategy realized the highest gain with 10.56% in 2019 as per the Eurekahedge report below.

Figure 1: Hedge Fund Strategy Return Map, Source: Eurekahedge July 2019

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