Saturday, July 28, 2012

Caribbean hedge fund for everyone

On Caribbean islands you can enable vacation and make money using certain products, the EU UCITS Directive, investors may reflect hedge fund strategies. What do you need.
by Christopher Platt, Euro am Sonntag
Crystal clear water, deep blue skies, fine sandy beach: Beach lovers will really be in the Cayman Islands at their expense. The archipelago, which is called in English Cayman Islands, is located in the Caribbean, 350 kilometers south of Cuba.

Although the islands are very popular with its picturesque beaches and unique coral reefs with travelers in the course, but other industry has a far more important than tourism: the capital Georgetown is one of the largest financial centers in the world. Many international banks have branches there. The attractiveness of the Cayman Islands as a financial center based on the favorable conditions existing there as the tax exemption.
For this reason, the island group has established itself as an important location for hedge funds.

These are mutual funds that have little or no investment restrictions. Their work is now controlled only weakly to regular reports, they are not required. To implement their strategy, they can use derivatives, among other things, to sell securities that they have not (short sales), or borrow. Hedge funds pursue very different concepts. Relatively well known is the long-short equity strategy. Here, the managers of both stocks to buy and profit from their capital gains and short sales, which he earned money in a falling market.

Hedge Funds: Quarrelsome scapegoats

Mark Sievers is, it hardly : Hedge funds are often consulted as to blame for failures in the financial sector. Wrongly, as Markus Sievers explained that defends the industry.
by Mark Sievers, guest author of € on Sunday
As in 2004, hedge funds in Germany have been approved for public sale, the asset class in this country outside the financial sector was still largely unknown. The debate on hedge funds took place mainly in the financial pages of the print media. She was by then objectively and calmly proceed.

But with the sobriety of the reporting was on 17 April 2005 at a blow over. On this day appeared in the newspaper "Bild am Sonntag" an interview with the former SPD chairman Franz Muentefering to financial investors. The decisive statement by the then Chief of the Social Democrats: "Some financial investors [...] have no face, they attack like locusts over companies." What time knew no one: With the publication of the article started an unparalleled career of the term "hedge fund".
The comparison with the
Locusts lags
The accidental alliteration of the words "grasshopper" and "hedge fund" contributed to an almost inflationary use of the word in - especially in economically distant parts of the media. Thus, locusts and hedge funds have become synonymous in the public perception of German, although hedge funds have nothing to do with the practices of the Müntefering actually criticized private-equity industry. Now, seven years after the legendary interview that hardly a day goes by where is the prejudice against the policy on hedge funds, they would destroy businesses and jobs at risk not taken.

SJB Equities Fund portrait. Invesco UK Equity Fund.

The Olympics in London, currently directs the attention in a positive way to the UK, where recent economic data had prepared, however, little reason to rejoice. Sun confirm the final numbers for the development of the UK gross domestic product (GDP) that Britain has slipped deeper into recession. For the second quarter of 2012 had the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported a decline in economic output of EUR -0.7 percent reported in the quarterly comparison - much weaker numbers than they had been expected in the consensus estimate of -0.2 percent. This lists the British economy is not only the third negative quarter in a row, but also the most violent contraction since early 2009.

The worsening recession in Britain has benefited from the weak performance of the UK service sector, which accounts for roughly three-quarters of the local economy. It shrank by 0.1 percent the previous quarter. At the same time, industrial production went down by -1.4 percent, down not as strong as for over three years. At worst it looked in the British construction sector, which was recorded due to bad weather, a decline of -5.2 percent on a quarterly basis.

Is it given the current economic climate and positive messages that counter-cyclical investors to start to move in UK equities? After all, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the UK in 2012, continued overall low economic growth rate of +0.2 percent. At the same time for the third quarter of positive growth forecasts,