Recession fears and interest rates keep holding investors on high alert. The ECB and the Fed both raised interest rates in their last meeting in May 2023. While the Fed hinted at a decent likelihood that interest rate hikes will stop, it is not the case for the ECB which emphasized that there is still more work to be done to get inflation under control. In particular in the US, this is a positive development, as the premise of no further hikes might be realistic for the time since the recent hikes started. Despite this outlook, the situation is still highly uncertain. A large contributor is the banking crisis, which already includes the second-largest insolvency of a bank. The pressure on the industry is continuing with the collapse of First Republic and subsequent acquisition by JPMorgan. The uncertainty is further increased by the debate on the debt ceiling of the US. So far, there has been little progress but there needs to be a solution fast, as according to some sources, the US could go bankrupt as early as June 2023. This development also led to the largest aggregate short position of US Treasuries in history. In the EU, officials of the ECB highlight that further measures are necessary, as inflation is not low enough yet and it has been staying at such high levels for too long. On the opposite end, there are more and more concerns arising from high rates. Many expect the banking crisis to keep continuing and lower growth rates, which is evident by the GDP growth of the EU in Q1 2023 of only 0.1%. In this rather critical state, gold has seen a resurgence over the past months. Gold reclaimed the $2k mark in early April 2023 and has maintained there ever since. The increased uncertainty also manifested itself in substantial inflows in gold ETFs in recent weeks. Thus far, hedge funds have done well in this challenging ecosystem. The industry mostly managed the initial drawdowns well. It also led to a more promising perception of hedge funds themselves, as the number of launches is comparable to pre-Covid levels for the first time. The industry also reached a new milestone of $5tn AuM according to Barclay. Fundraising remains an issue for all alternative asset classes with the exception of very large hedge funds. The fundraising problem is especially dire in private equity and venture capital funds. The private equity industry is starting to feel the pain from its delay from public markets and their drawdown a few months ago. Not only have valuations dropped by almost a third, but private equity-backed IPOs are virtually inexistent. Investments also have become more scarce. In particular venture capital has been hit hard, as quarterly investments have dropped by 50% YoY.
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