Global Trading Strategies Closes on Macro Strategy Disappointments

Global Trading Strategies, the Sydney-based fund founded by a group of three former Goldman Sachs JBWere Pty. traders, closed after its macro investment strategy failed reported Bloomberg Thursday.

The Rise and Fall of Global Trading Strategies

Global Trading Strategies was founded by Brett Allender, Andrew Peden and Karl Mayer in 2005. It officially stopped trading July 31 after having negative returns for over a year. It had peaked at a portfolio value of $1.2 billion in 2008. Chief Operating Officer Murray Chatfield explained to Bloomberg Businessweek, “The principals decided that the current environment wasn’t conducive to their trading style and they thought it better to hand money back to investors.” He said, “A lot of our investors didn’t want us to do it, but we thought it was the correct thing to do,” he said. “At some point we’d make a decision on how and when to re-enter the market.”

Global Trading Isn’t Alone – The Hedge Fund Market is ‘Quite Tough’

According to Damien Hatfield, director at Triple A Partners Australia, “It’s actually quite tough” for some hedge funds at the moment. “If markets trend up and markets trend down, they’re good environments for hedge funds,” he said. “But when they go up and down sharply they’re not good because a lot of these guys are trying to find a trend and stay with it.” In fairness, hedge funds fell 3.2% in September. Funds using macro strategies specifically lost 2.4% in September and were down 3.3% for the year as of October 1.