BarclayHedge Blog

From the Third Quarter, 2008 issue of Barclay Managed Funds Report. The full report also includes 24 hedge fund and managed futures performance ranking tables and in-depth manager profiles. Subscribe. View Roundtables from back issues.

It seems that hardly a day passes without some breaking news story catapulting its way into the headlines and inducing turmoil in global financial and commodity markets. Daily oil price fluctuations have become a dominant force in setting the direction of equity and currency markets. Fixed income markets gyrate with ever-changing prognostications of rising inflation and deepening recession as investors grapple with whether or not Mr. Bernanke can successfully keep the ship afloat in these turbulent waters. And pandering politicians, ever determined to demonstrate to voters that they have their interests at heart, are falling over themselves in a rush to introduce new laws to protect us from unscrupulous mortgage brokers, bankers, speculators and short sellers. So what is an investor to do?

Given so many daunting crosscurrents to navigate, it may come as somewhat a surprise that global macro hedge funds are one of only five profitable hedge fund sectors in 2008. The 13 sectors in the loss column include almost all of the most popular equity-based strategies including equity long/short and emerging markets. CTAs, who are mostly momentum-based macro traders, are having their best year since 2002 and have gained more than 10% through the end of June.

In order to get a better read of how macro fund managers are viewing the impact that current events are having on the financial and commodity markets, we’ve invited a panel of distinguished and experienced practitioners to answer some of our more pressing questions and to hopefully shed light in some dark corners. Our panelists are:

Michael Howell, CrossBorder Capital Limited.
Paul Lambert, Polar Capital Partners.
Bo Thiara, Peninsula, LP.

The complete article will be available on the BarclayHedge.com website in November. Subscribe to receive each issue of the Barclay Managed Funds Report at it comes out.