Alternative Market Briefing

Single country macro economic themes could become more interesting

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva:

Mark Farrington is managing partner at Macro Currency Group (MCG), a global specialist currency and macro fund manager managing more than $9bn in AuM through absolute return, beta and hedging strategies. He discussed the opportunities in this unique global cycle and what approach is most likely to lead to positive global macro returns, at Terrapinn’s Hedge Funds World conference in Zurich last month.

By this unique cycle phase, he means the 2012-13 cycle which is characterised by:

Sub-trend growth;

Policy exhaustion;

Excess liquidity: "even though liquidity is much more equally accessible, we have a situation of excess in the capital markets;"

Macro-economic uncertainty: "this is primarily the uncertainty of understanding how this phase ends, how we move from having private sector self-originating growth recovery that is not induced by policy intervention…"

Low financial market volatility: "characterised normally with high-levels of macro-economic activity and negative growth outcome activity;"

And regulatory uncertainty, "one of the more difficult aspects to deal with."

The cycle might have started at the end of last year, and began impacting performance in the middle of this year, he noted, and MCG’s framework indica......................

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