The monthly performance report from PivotalPath, the Pivotal Point Of View, has just been published. As a reminder, each month we look at performance across the 2,000+ institutionally-relevant hedge funds in our database, measuring over 100 different data points per fund. In total, this report covers roughly $2.3T in total industry assets and gauges returns among 40 hedge fund strategies.
Q1 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
Today’s report looks at performance across the industry in March as well as Q1 overall. We also look at the strategies that are outperforming, and the factors driving that change – most notably, interest rates. Below are a few of the highlights.
- 62% of managers reported positive monthly performance, with over three-quarters of funds up in Q1 (18% returned double digits).
- Hedge funds were up 0.8% in March (down from 3.4% in February), but still bringing the Composite index up to 4.2% for the year.
- Equity Sector was by far the worst performing strategy, both in March and YTD. Why? Equity Sector is comprised of several sub-strategies, including Healthcare, TMT, Financials and Energy. Over the last few years, Healthcare and TMT vastly outperformed Financials and Energy. However, the US 10-year Treasury yield’s rise from 1.4% to 1.74% in March triggered a rotation from growth to value/cyclicals. As a result, Financials (+3.8%) and Energy (+3.2%) placed in the top quartile of monthly sub-strategy performance, while Healthcare (-3.3%) and TMT (-4.4%) ranked at the absolute bottom.
