Asia’s hedge fund industry resumed its growth path again in January after suffering a marginal decline in December. Assets under management grew 4.2% during the month against a slight 0.5% shrinkage experienced in December when redemptions among investors and lacklustre performance led to an overall reduction in assets.
During January, rebounding global markets shored up performance in most strategies, except those focused on India. As a result asset inflows exceeded outflows by 1.2%, compared with a 0.2% net outflow in December.
Notwithstanding the improving markets and investor sentiment, both Chinese and Indian equity-focused managers suffered from net outflows in January – of -1.7% and -1.5% respectively – while Asia inc-Japan funds saw outflows of 1.6%.
During the month the AsiaHedge Composite Index ended an estimated 2% higher but underperformed the MSCI Pacific Free Net Index, which rose 6.5% in the same month. But Indian equity managers had a poor month, with median performance losses of 3.2% taking the overall AuM in the strategy down by 4.7%.
Among the long/short strategies, Australian equity experienced the strongest net inflow percentage-wise at 4.4%. The performance of managers added 1.6% for a combined 6% growth in AuM compared to the 6.6% shrinkage in December.
Both macro and multi-strategy strategies experienced moderate increases in net flows of 0.1% and 0.8%, respectively, but scaled up assets significantly from performance by 10.4% and 11.8% respectively – resulting in AuM growth of 10.5% and 12.6% respectively compared to December.
Despite Chinese equity managers still suffering net outflows during the month of 1.7%, strong performance shored up AuM by 3.2% for an overall 1.5% gain in assets.
Japan equity-focused long/short strategies enjoyed 0.7% net inflows, while performance contributed 3.7% for a 4.4% jump in AuM.
Global equity funds saw an equal amount of money redeeming and subscribing resulting in zero net inflow, but good performance contributed to an overall 4.8% gain in AuM.
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Industry assets grow again in January on AsiaHedge.