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NEW YORK — August 28, 2012 —
Single-manager hedge funds, which
include commodities trading
advisors, withstood market swings,
macroeconomic uncertainties and
regulatory reforms in the first half
of 2012, increasing their reported
assets under management by 5.23% to
$1.892 trillion, according to a
study by
PerTrac, the leading provider of
analytics, reporting and
communications software for
investment professionals. This
mid-year update to their annual
study on the size and composition of
the hedge fund industry also found a
continued decline in the reported
assets under management of funds of
hedge funds. The amount of money
invested in these investment
vehicles, which allocate exclusively
to hedge funds, declined by 4.92%
during the first half of 2012 to
$425 billion. Part of the slide in
these funds’ assets can be
attributed to the decline in the
number of them reporting information
to databases, which slipped by
3.81% to 3,259.
Despite the drop for funds of hedge
funds, the total, reported amount
invested within the hedge fund
industry, including funds of hedge
funds and single-manager hedge funds
(of which, commodities trading
advisors – or CTAs – are considered
a subset in this study) climbed to
$2.317 trillion in the first six
months of the year. The total
number of all funds reporting to
databases also jumped by 4.61% to
14,013, led by single-manager hedge
funds, whose ranks swelled 7.46% to
10,754 funds. Most of the gains in
the number of single-manager hedge
funds (75%) came from small and
start-up funds with less than $25
million in assets under management.
These reported numbers suggest that
asset allocators have a growing
interest in alternative investments
and an increasing tendency toward
investing directly in hedge funds.
The data also points to the
resilience of hedge funds as the end
of the first half of 2012 marks
three and a half years of steady
growth.
“Although challenging economic
conditions have impacted hedge
funds’ performance during the last
few years, investors still see their
long term value and are giving them
a significant place in their
portfolios,” said Brendan Dolan,
President of PerTrac.
When investors allocated to
alternatives in 2012, they favored
the largest funds. The “billion
dollar club” of single-manager hedge
funds, those that oversee more than
$1 billion, saw assets under
management increase to $1.146
trillion from $1.08 trillion at the
end of 2011. The
billion-dollar-plus funds
represented 60.6% of all assets
invested with single-manager hedge
funds at the end of the first half
of 2012.
The PerTrac hedge fund study is
unique because it is the only one
that aggregates information from 11
leading global databases. This
provides for the most holistic
picture of the industry. Of those
funds that report, 54% reported to
only one database in 2011, according
to the 9th edition of the study.
PerTrac’s proprietary analytics
software also removes duplicative
fund data for an added level of
precision in analyzing the number of
funds and assets under management.
The study also found, among
reporting funds, that:
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The “billion dollar club”
reigned supreme within funds of
hedge funds as well. 48.7% of
assets were controlled by the
3.24% of firms that each managed
more than $1 billion.
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CTAs posted healthy gains in
assets of 6.05% this year,
bringing their total to $438
billion under management at the
end of first half of 2012. The
total number of CTA funds rose
by 1.26% from the end of 2011 to
1,528.
-
Forty-five CTAs reported
managing in excess of $1 billion
and they accounted for 78.1% of
that sector’s assets under
management.
For more information, please
download the full PerTrac study by
clicking
here.
About PerTrac
PerTrac provides software solutions
at the fund-level of investing for
investment professionals including
pensions, family offices, hedge
funds, long-only managers,
endowments, sovereign wealth funds,
funds of hedge funds and industry
service providers. More than 1,400
organizations in 50 countries rely
on PerTrac software solutions to
help them maximize returns, reduce
risk and operate more efficiently.
Founded in 1996, PerTrac is
headquartered in New York with
offices in London, Hong Kong, Tokyo,
Reno, and Memphis. For additional
information on the full suite of
PerTrac software solutions, please
visit
www.pertrac.com.
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Media Contact:
Mitch Ackles
Hedge Fund PR
(646) 657-9230
Mitch@HedgeFundPR.net
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