Ex-hedge fund BlueCrest extends winning run with 50% gain this year
Investment house has trounced returns of around 9% in broader industry
BlueCrest Capital, the private investment firm headed by billionaire trader Michael Platt, has chalked up gains of around 50 per cent this year, continuing a run of blistering performance since returning outside investors’ money four years ago.
The publicity-shy firm, which was one of the world’s biggest hedge funds up to 2015, made the gains from trading interest rates as well as emerging-market bonds, said people familiar with its positioning.
BlueCrest declined to comment.
The gains dwarf the returns posted by the hedge fund industry this year. Funds on average have gained about 9 per cent over the first 11 months of 2019, according to data group HFR, lagging a 28 per cent gain in the S&P 500 index. While funds have generally profited from rising stocks and bonds, many were caught out by a reversal in bond yields over the past four months, as they climbed from historic lows.
BlueCrest’s gains this year follow returns of 50 per cent in 2016 and 54 per cent in 2017. Last year, when hedge funds on average lost money in falling markets, the firm still made a 25 per cent gain.
The flagship BlueCrest Capital International macro fund, which bet on moves in global bonds and currencies, returned 45 per cent in 2009 and grew to $14bn at its peak. The firm’s overall assets rose to as much as $36bn in assets in 2012.
But assets later shrank to around $8bn following a period of lacklustre returns and the spin-off of Systematica, the quantitative funds arm. In late 2015 BlueCrest announced it would convert into a family office to manage wealth primarily for Mr Platt and other staff.
At the time Mr Platt said that his bets had been constrained by institutional investors’ demand for lower-risk products, and that converting into a family office would allow him to take more risk.
Mr Platt, whose fortune is estimated at £3bn by the Sunday Times Rich List, hit the headlines this week when a video emerged of him in the back of a New York cab talking about his wealth.
In October the Financial Times reported that a team of emerging market credit traders at BlueCrest’s New York and London offices were in the process of relocating to Geneva.