Opalesque Exclusive: Jim Simons` Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund hedge fund of funds struggle portfolio construction to change

Alternative Market Briefing

Opalesque Exclusive: Jim Simons` Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund, hedge fund of funds struggle, portfolio construction to change

Thursday, November 27, 2008

From Matthias Knab: In yesterday's overview "FLAT is the new up, CTAs lead hedge fund return leagues" (see here for full article), we already pointed out to the wide dispersion of hedge fund returns this year.

Jim Simons' Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund, which was announced in mid-2005 with the stunning claim that it could handle as much as $100 billion, is down -16.14% as of mid-November 2008, according to industry sources. The fund was up 20.62% in 2006, down -1.04% in 2007.

The Tosca (Class A) fund, who in previous years was a consistent performer (21.77% in 2005, 23.86% in 2006 and 20.10% in 2007), is down a whopping -66.33%.

Many fund of funds are dragged down too, the BlackRock Absolute Return Strategies (GBP) was down -23.54% end of October, the GAM Diversity series (I to III) delivered between -10% to -13% by mid-November, while GAM Composite Absolute Return fund (US-$) was down up to -20%.

With the exception of the UBS MMA Commodities Funds, which depending on share currencies are slightly up (around 0.5% to almost 3%), most UBS fund of funds are down between -8% (UBS Neutral Alpha Strategies) and -37.19% (UBS Global Alpha Strategies XL ($).

Dexion Absolute Limited (GBP), who since 2003 was comfortably beating the HFRI Fund of Funds Composite Index (except in 2006 where returns were 8.91% versus 10.39%), is......................

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