Altin Drops Comac for Tudor and Stone Milliner and Adds to CTA Exposure Through Bluetrend

By Hedge Fund Insight staff

The fall in assets at Comac and the subsequent layoffs have been publicly visible for a while.  Drawdowns of record length at CTAs are also well recorded. But that does not mean that investors in hedge funds have given up on the global macro and quantitative Commodity Trading Advisors. Alternative Asset Advisors SA (AAA), the Syz & Co Group subsidiary has added to both these strategies in its funds of funds, the most visible of which is the publicly quoted Altin AG.

The Half Year Report of Altin shows that the commitment to global macro as a strategy is little changed over the first half of the year – constituting 14% of the portfolio at the half year stage.  Over the first six months of  the year the 3% holding in Comac Global Macro Fund and the near 2% holding on Omni Global Fund were eliminated.  AAA had astutely kept a vestigial holding in Tudor BVI  Global Fund (0.15 of a share) – this was expanded to a full 3.3% holding, and a new manager was introduced – Stone Milliner now manage 2% of the Altin assets through their Macro Fund.

On the CTA side, Altin acted in a contrarian way by taking exposures to the strategy up to 4.2% of the fund of hedge funds from 2.4% at the start of the year. AAA added to two existing CTA manager allocations in the period, and made a fresh 1.4% allocation to Bluetrend. However, that is not the end of it.

The investment advisor to Altin AG also subscribed capital to CFM’s Stratus Feeder fund. Paris based Capital Fund Management is a systematic manager, and although, like Cantab’s Aristarchus, the managers describe the fund as a systematic macro fund, it could equally well be described as a managed futures fund. By initiating a holding of 3.5% in CFM’s Stratus Feeder fund in the first half of 2013, AAA had taken managed futures from 2.4% to 7.7% of Altin AG at the mid-year point.

Parenthetically, the managers of Altin showed that they had had enough of the losses of specialist commodity managers. Chris Levett’s Clive Capital managed nearly 3% of Altin’s assets at the end 0f 2012, a year in which the fund lost money. AAA redeemed from Clive Capital in the same period as Levett took $33m out of the business. It is not known whether that is coincidence or something more.

Altin’s NAV was up 4.61% in 2013 (at the end of July) after gains in three of the last four years.