Nordic hedge funds edged higher in June, capping a strong second quarter with a gain of 5.4 percent and bringing their return for the first six months of the year to 4.4 percent. Long/short equity was the only strategy category to finish June in negative territory, while all other strategy groups posted positive returns.
Four of the five main strategy categories within the Nordic Hedge Index ended June in the green, with long/short equity hedge funds being the sole exception. Interestingly, equity long-only managers, tracked separately from the main Nordic Hedge Index, advanced 0.9 percent during the month, lifting their first-half return to 7.1 percent. By contrast, long/short equity hedge funds declined 0.7 percent on average in June, trimming their year-to-date gain to 2.8 percent. Despite being the weakest-performing strategy category in June, equity hedge funds produced the month’s three best-performing individual funds.
The CTA index, tracking managed futures, macro, and trend-following strategies, gained 0.6 percent in June to end the first half of the year up 6.1 percent. Diversified and multi-manager hedge funds delivered similarly strong performances, advancing 0.5 percent during the month to bring their year-to-date returns to 6.2 percent and 6.1 percent, respectively. Fixed-income hedge funds rose 0.4 percent in June, lifting their first-half return to 2.9 percent.
Performance dispersion remained elevated throughout June. The top 20 percent of reporting managers generated an average return of 4.1 percent, while the bottom 20 percent lost an average of 4.2 percent. Roughly two-thirds of reporting funds finished the month with positive returns, and more than three-quarters ended the first half of the year in positive territory.
Best Performing Nordic Hedge Funds in June
Despite long/short equity being the only sub-strategy category to post a negative average return in June, it was the category’s constituents that dominated the monthly leaderboard. Long-biased equity fund Impega, managed by Petter Kvamme Jensen, surged 14.6 percent in June, making it both the best-performing fund of the month and the strongest performer of the year to date with a gain of more than 75 percent.
The two healthcare-focused funds managed by Rhenman & Partners followed closely behind. The flagship Rhenman Healthcare Equity L/S advanced 13.2 percent, while the recently launched Rhenman Healthcare Next Generation L/S gained 11.5 percent. Volt Diversified Alpha Fund, combining trend-following and macro strategies, returned 4.6 percent in June, taking its first-half performance to 11.5 percent.
Following a standout gain of 18.1 percent in May, Atlant Edge added another 4.5 percent in June, ending the first six months of the year up 17.8 percent. Machine learning-driven Lynx Constellation also posted a strong 4.5 percent gain, increasing its year-to-date return to 21.7 percent, making it the second-best-performing CTA strategy of the year after its older sibling, Lynx.
Top Performing Long-Only Equity Funds
Sissener Equity Opportunities topped the performance table in the Equity Long-Only (ELO) category in June with a return of 10.5 percent, lifting its year-to-date gain to 28.4 percent. The long-only equity fund managed by Sissener AS now ranks as the second-best-performing fund in the ELO category for the first half of the year, trailing only Asilo Argo, which has returned 39.2 percent through the end of June.
Introduced in September 2023, the Equity Long-Only (ELO) category comprises funds that do not qualify as hedge funds because they employ a long-only investment approach, but nevertheless exhibit many characteristics typically associated with hedge fund strategies. These include the use of leverage and derivatives, concentrated portfolios, performance-based fee structures, origins as spin-offs from long/short strategies, and a focus on delivering absolute rather than benchmark-relative returns.
The post Month in Review: Nordic Hedge Funds Cap Strong Second Quarter appeared first on HedgeNordic.
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