While 2018 was disappointing for many hedge funds, including new offerings, several new launches that year delivered.

The notable exceptions included Sean Ma’s Snow Lake’s Asia Master Fund, which proved to be one of the more successful new hedge funds launches from the region based on performance.

The pan-Asian long/short fund run by Ma together with portfolio managers Paul Kim and Yusuke Saito, delivered a robust 34.4% gain in just nine months for an annualized return of around 45%. By comparison hedge funds= tracked by AsiaHedge suffered a median loss of more than 6%

The strategy which gained from long and short bets on TMT and financial stocks, launched in April last year and grew to a $100m size after returning a strong 13% gain in December. The most profitable trades for the strategy last year were in Chinese, Japan and Korean stocks.

Another strong gainer was Singapore-based Judah Value Activist Fund launched in January through the Swiss-Asia hedge fund platform and delivered 53.22% for the whole year.

An investment in Hong Kong listed Agritrade Resources contributed the most to last year’s gain. That company was recently included in the Hang Seng Composite Index and the Hang Seng Stock Connect Index.

The Hong Kong-based Asia-equity ex-Japan Auspicious One-Belt-One-Road Fund run by Andrew Wang gained 53.52% in the nine months it was operating last year. The fund launched in April and was managing $11m by the end of the year.

It was highly volatile at the start crashing as much as 26% in its first month as volatility swept through the Chinese market, but the portfolio delivered the goods in succeeding months, especially in June when it gained more than 30%.

Another new fund that performed remarkably well was the multi-strategy focused Padma Fund run by Pan Yuefang and Wang Dingwen at Yong Rong Asset Management. The strategy delivered a 29.59% gain for 2018 and was running $46.53m in assets. Volatility across equity markets cut strong gains early in the year performance but the strategy was able to retain a relatively robust return notwithstanding the sharp drawdowns later in the year.

Top performing new funds in 2018 on AsiaHedge.