In one of the week's most striking performance stories, Ironshield Capital's market-neutral High Yield Alpha Fund UCITS remained in positive territory throughout the March 2026 Iran war selloff - a result Opalesque attributes to the fund's 25-year equity put hedging strategy and its positioning in what the manager describes as 13-year-high credit dispersion conditions. With macro hedge funds, multi-strategy platforms and long-biased vehicles all absorbing sharp losses as crude oil spiked and risk assets sold off, Ironshield's credit-focused, market-neutral approach provided a genuine proof of concept for investors searching for uncorrelated returns. The fund's London-based manager, Frits Lieuw-Kie-Song, told Opalesque that the current environment of elevated credit dispersion presents the most fertile conditions for the strategy in over a decade.

New hedge fund launches hit a four-year high in 2025, reaching 562 for the year, while liquidations dropped to a historic low of 287, according to HFR data published by Opalesque. Industry capital surged to a record USD 5.16 trillion at the start of 2026. In Q4 2025 alone, 65 equity hedge funds and 35 macro funds launched, reflecting sustained confidence among managers and allocators despite the geopolitical turbulence that has since dominated early 2026. Equity hedge strategies led launches, while macro funds - now being severely tested by the Iran war shock - represented the second-largest category of new e......................

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