By Svea Herbst-Bayliss
BOSTON (Reuters) - Hedge fund Cinctive Capital Management is expanding beyond its bread-and-butter stock trading and has hired former Brevan Howard trader Giles Coppel to lead a team that will bet on interest rates and currencies as global macro investments find new favor.
"We are moving to a different paradigm and this is a time for macro investing," said Richard Schimel, who co-founded Cinctive with Larry Sapanski in 2019, confirming the moves.
Fresh market volatility coupled with a spike in inflation and an expected end to generous central bank stimulus are combining to create ideal conditions for these types of strategies after a period of lackluster returns.
Cinctive, with more than $3 billion in regulatory assets, according to recent filing, hired Coppel to lead the team as the firm's anchor investors and others said they wanted to put money into macro strategies as making money in stocks becomes harder.
Since January, macro-oriented strategies delivered some of the hedge fund industry's best returns, gaining 2% in the first two months of 2022, according to Hedge Fund Research data. At the same time, the average hedge fund lost 2% and the broader S&P 500 stock index tumbled 8%.
The shift in conditions prompted Schimel and Sapanski to expand with a team of five. Coppel, who joined in February, will be Cinctive's macro chief investment officer. He cemented his reputation at Brevan Howard and ran his own firm, Phillimore Investments. Macro strategist Greg Kaldor, who worked with Coppel at Phillimore, also joined Cinctive in February.
Joining this month will be Raymond Wang, as a portfolio manager responsible for macro rates trading and global relative value after working at BlueCrest Capital Management; Mitch Nadel, the former head of America's Macro Trading at MUFG Securities; and Rak Natrajan, an execution trader who previously worked at Autonomy Capital.