Ex-Regal managers launch specialist stock-picking hedge fund focused on Asia and Australia Tim Campbell

In ball games, football, baseball, tennis and the like, players try to predict accurately where the ball is going – in order to hit it. A new hedge fund manager calls it taking a long lead. Taking a "long lead" on a moving object, he says, is about focusing ahead on where the object is going rather than where it is now. This manager has recently launched a fund that does just that; it focuses on changing operating environments.

The Longlead Market Neutral Fund, a specialist long/short equity manager with a core focus on Asia and Australia, launched on August 2014 with subscriptions and capacity commitments of around $70m. It is a Cayman-domiciled fund, US dollar-denominated, licensed in Singapore and SEC registered.

The principals and co-fund managers, Tim Campbell and Andrew West, both worked together for five years at Regal Fund Management in Sydney, a hedge fund that runs several equity long/short strategies. They span out in 2013 and started Longlead Capital Partners in February this year, with offices in Sydney and Singapore.

Longlead's constructed track record from Aprll 2010 to October 2013 shows an annual return of 16.4% and a volatility of 6%, compared to 6% and 16% for the MSCI Asia, and 6% and 8% for the Eurekahedge Asia HF Index. The fund returned 3.5% in August and 7% in September, and the Eurekahedge Asia HF Index 0.78% and 0.01%.

"We are firstly a bottom-up fundamental stock-picker; we look for alpha longs and alpha shorts to put together in an equity market neutral portfolio," Andrew West explained to Opalesque. "We are truly beta neutral; we have hard risk limits at the fund level where the maximum net exposure on a beta-adjusted basis is +/-10%. We are essentially beta neutral......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.