Australia's Absolute Return & Hedge Funds continued to weather the storm in financial markets and outperform the broader equity benchmarks on a year to date (YTD) basis to the end of August. The ASX200 was down over 27% over this period, while the average hedge fund return in AFM's database of over 200 funds was down 4.16%.
To date approximately 90% of all funds surveyed by Australian Fund Monitors have reported August results and the average return for the month was +0.90% against a rise of +3.08% for the ASX200 and +1.20% for the S&P500. During the month 55% of funds achieved a positive return after fees with 30% outperforming the ASX200.
It has been a turbulent year in the industry across all strategies with most funds finding it hard to avoid at least one negative month. The best performing strategies continue to be non-equity based, including Commodities, FX, Global Macro and Futures. However, Commodity strategies have been retracing in recent months while Equity Market Neutral funds continue to perform well. The only fund manager to achieve a positive result every month since January is Fortitude Capital (AIMA Hedge Fund of the Year 2008) implementing an equity market neutral strategy.
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