AGL 38.54 Increased By ▲ 0.97 (2.58%)
AIRLINK 129.50 Decreased By ▼ -3.00 (-2.26%)
BOP 5.61 Decreased By ▼ -0.03 (-0.53%)
CNERGY 3.86 Increased By ▲ 0.09 (2.39%)
DCL 8.73 Decreased By ▼ -0.14 (-1.58%)
DFML 41.76 Increased By ▲ 0.76 (1.85%)
DGKC 88.30 Decreased By ▼ -1.86 (-2.06%)
FCCL 35.00 Decreased By ▼ -0.08 (-0.23%)
FFBL 67.35 Increased By ▲ 0.85 (1.28%)
FFL 10.61 Increased By ▲ 0.46 (4.53%)
HUBC 108.76 Increased By ▲ 2.36 (2.22%)
HUMNL 14.66 Increased By ▲ 1.26 (9.4%)
KEL 4.75 Decreased By ▼ -0.11 (-2.26%)
KOSM 6.95 Increased By ▲ 0.10 (1.46%)
MLCF 41.65 Decreased By ▼ -0.15 (-0.36%)
NBP 59.60 Increased By ▲ 1.02 (1.74%)
OGDC 183.00 Increased By ▲ 1.75 (0.97%)
PAEL 26.25 Increased By ▲ 0.55 (2.14%)
PIBTL 5.97 Increased By ▲ 0.14 (2.4%)
PPL 146.70 Decreased By ▼ -1.70 (-1.15%)
PRL 23.61 Increased By ▲ 0.39 (1.68%)
PTC 16.56 Increased By ▲ 1.32 (8.66%)
SEARL 68.30 Decreased By ▼ -0.49 (-0.71%)
TELE 7.23 Decreased By ▼ -0.01 (-0.14%)
TOMCL 35.95 Decreased By ▼ -0.05 (-0.14%)
TPLP 7.85 Increased By ▲ 0.45 (6.08%)
TREET 14.20 Decreased By ▼ -0.04 (-0.28%)
TRG 50.45 Decreased By ▼ -0.40 (-0.79%)
UNITY 26.75 Increased By ▲ 0.35 (1.33%)
WTL 1.21 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
BR100 9,806 Increased By 37.8 (0.39%)
BR30 29,678 Increased By 278.1 (0.95%)
KSE100 92,304 Increased By 366.3 (0.4%)
KSE30 28,840 Increased By 96.6 (0.34%)

Asia offers hedge fund managers better opportunities to generate returns than more developed markets, but is short on the tools that would help them smooth volatility, industry players said on Wednesday.
The less efficient markets that many hedge funds thrive on will attract more managers and investment to Asia, they added, boosting the more than $100 billion hedge funds have invested in the region.
"We all recognise that there are many more market inefficiencies here in the Asia-Pacific region so that there are opportunities for smart, nimble hedge funds to extract sources of return," Vision Investment Management President Julius Wang told a fund management conference in Hong Kong.
"Having said that, the converse of the statement is that there are also limited instruments in some cases ... when the markets do have a correction or have a difficult time, how does one effectively hedge against those?"
Vision, a Hong Kong-based fund of hedge fund managers, had about $1.7 billion in assets under management as of June. Hedge funds are loosely regulated investment pools that aim to make money in both up and down markets, often by employing sophisticated trading strategies like short selling and leverage.
Short selling, a key feature of developed markets, involves borrowing shares and selling them in the hope of buying them back later at a lower price. But shorting is banned in mainland China and Malaysia, and often difficult to do in some other Asian markets.
While it is technically legal to short stock in Thailand, it had often proved too expensive, said David Roes, chief executive officer of Asean Investment Management. "We quite often find ourselves in the long-only category," he said.
Roes said Asean Investment, which has less than $5 million under management, often pursues a "friendly" activist strategy, encouraging smaller undervalued firms to improve their governance and corporate communications.
Many Asian governments clamped down on short selling after the Asian crisis of 1997-98. But attitudes have begun to soften in recent years, said former hedge fund manager Eliza Lau, chief executive of SAIL Advisors Ltd, a fund of hedge funds firm.

Copyright Reuters, 2006

Comments

Comments are closed.