Money continued to pour into Indian equity strategies again in September, despite hedge fund performance plummeting. -
While listed markets were on the up in August stock prices have corrected sharply in conjunction with a weaker currency. This saw dollar-denominated Indian equity strategies tracked by AsiaHedge suffer heavy losses, with average performance down 13.5%, well below the Sensex’s -6.3% return.
The Dalton India Fund was hit hard with losses of more than 15%, while one of 2017’s best performing Asian fund managers Atyant was down more than 16% in September taking year-to-date losses to -33%.
Yet, fund flows into the sector continued to be strong. The gross 6.6% inflows Indian fund managers received in September were the only positive fund flows across all Asia-focused strategies. However, the performance drop saw net flows into India strategies down by 6.9% .
Japanese equity strategies were the region’s best performers for the month, with a modest 1.6% average return. Fund flows were down slightly at -0.8% creating net inflows of 0.9% – the only positive figure for Asian strategies in September.
Australia’s hedge fund managers running global equity strategies fell out of favour with fund flows of -7.1% and just marginal positive performance at 0.3%. The outflows come a month after investors piled into Australian managed global equities strategies, with positive inflows of 8.6% in August.
Antipodean fund managers focused on their domestic market also suffered outflows of 5.6%. Australian managers – the best performers for the year so far – were ahead of the benchmark, a drop of 1.6% registered by the Australian All Ordinaries index. This takes the respective year-to-date figures for Australia-focused managers to 0.9% and 3.3% on a median and mean basis, respectively.
Robust India fund flows continue on AsiaHedge.