Merricks Multi Strategy fund has returned +0.8% in July to take 2009 YTD returns to 3.3%.

The Fund, which was established in January 2008, invests in three lowly correlated strategies, Event Driven, Market Neutral and Soft Commodities (agriculture) focused on the developed markets in Asia. All three strategies produced positive returns in July.

Macquarie's MQ Asian Long Short fund has reported a 4.75% gain for the month as the region's markets continued to rally in July, taking their 12 month performance to +2.63%. YTD performance for 2009 is +9.52%.

The manager noted that the fund only lost money on two days during the month, with the largest loss just 0.1%, and recorded gains for each of the first 9 days when the markets were in negative territory.

Annualised performance for the Cayman based fund, which has US$101m in FUM, is +11.57% since inception in October 2005.

The MQ Asian fund uses a quantitative strategy to invest in over 600 individual positions across 12 countries in the Asian region.

Platinum Asset Management, Australia's largest absolute return manager with over $14 billion in FUM, records positive returns for all eight underlying funds in July.

The $3bn Platinum Asia Fund returned 8.40% for the month, to bring 2009 YTD performance to +35.5%, 12 month returns to 19.85% and annualised returns since March 2003 to 23.16%.

Best performing of Platinum's funds for the month was the European Fund which returned 8.50%, to bring 2008 YTD to +15.07%, 12 month returns to +2.21% and annualised returns since inception in July 1998 to 11.15%.

Platinum's largest fund, the International Shares Fund, with $7.6 bn in FUM returned +6.4% for the month, +13.62% in 2009 YTD, +25.79% in the past 12 months, and +14.74% annualised since inception in May 1995.

Shareholders in the ASX listed Platinum Asset Management (ASX: PTM) should also be happy with the results as the manager's performance fees of 16.5% above respective MSCI hurdles are not subject to any high water mark.