Bradley Wickens’s Broad Reach Hedge Fund Surges 42.5% in 2019

(Bloomberg) -- Bradley Wickens’s main hedge fund surged 42.5% last year, making it one of the best-performing in the world.

The $800 million Broad Reach Fund, which the former Spinnaker Capital money manager started in late 2016, focuses on emerging markets. It had positive returns in all asset classes and in every region of the world, Wickens said in a phone interview.

The London-based fund’s performance set it apart from its peers that bet on macroeconomic trends. While some firms, such as Greg Coffey’s Kirkoswald Asset Management, did post double-digit gains, most macro hedge funds delivered less impressive returns. The Bloomberg Macro Hedge Fund Index was up 5.4% through November last year.

“There was a lot to play for last year,” Wickens said. “Argentina blew up; Lebanon blew up. That creates incredible opportunities for 2020.”

The money manager, who was one of Spinnaker Capital’s founding partners and worked there for 17 years, said emerging markets are potentially on the cusp of better growth. “Continued lackluster growth in the U.S., and for the first time in a number of years probably a weaker U.S. dollar, will ignite emerging markets returns,” he said.

Broad Reach combines research-based macro investing with special situations and systematic trading to bet across emerging markets. The fund lost 9.5% in 2018 and gained 1.6% a year earlier.

Below are the 2019 returns for some European hedge funds:

To contact the reporter on this story: Nishant Kumar in London at nkumar173@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shelley Robinson at ssmith118@bloomberg.net, Patrick Henry, Lucca de Paoli

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