Context Summits -- Miami Roundup

Miami and its famed Fontainebleau Hotel drew thousands of hedge fund professionals, including investors, managers and service providers, to Context Summits last week, one of the industry’s biggest event annual events.  Over two days, managers and investors convened for prescheduled one-on-one meetings.

Coming off a solid 2017 with 12 months of outperformance in the hedge fund industry, EisnerAmper heard from a number of conference attendees about what’s on their minds.

Here were a few things mentioned:

INVESTORS:

Allocators, predominantly family offices, are more interested in non-U.S. equity strategies than U.S. because valuations in the U.S are high. More specifically, they are looking at Pan Asia strategies, India offerings and broader global macro funds. |

Long/short sector-focused funds continue to remain popular, especially strategies focused on biotech; health care; and technology, media and telecommunications (TMT).

On the less liquid side of the spectrum, investors continue to like private debt strategies and private equity funds.

Regarding fund structures, investors continue to prefer separately managed accounts (SMAs) since they offer more liquidity.

LAUNCHES:

Planned launches for early 2018 seem to be off to a slow start.

The industry continues to see an increasing number of bitcoin/cryptocurrency launches, along with quant and machine-learning strategies.

MACRO OUTLOOK:

Both managers and investors alike are in a period of anticipation with respect to the macro-economic outlook for the first half of 2018.

They predict improvement globally in emerging markets and developed markets.

They also foresee interest rates will rise.