(Bloomberg) -- Former BlueCrest Capital Management money manager Mohit Khurana’s own hedge fund cut risk after suffering losses while Eisler Capital reversed this year’s meager gains amid the recent global market rout.
Khurana’s Southern Ridges Macro fund lost an estimated 3% in three trading days through close of business hours in Asia on Aug. 5, according to an investor update seen by Bloomberg News. The losses wiped out most of the fund’s advance earlier in the year, shrinking gains to 1.2%, the update showed.
The fund’s previous maximum drawdown — a portfolio’s decline from its peak value to trough and a key statistic investors monitor — was 1.7% since it started trading in 2019, another document showed.
Meanwhile, Eisler’s $4 billion multistrategy hedge fund slumped almost 2% last week, erasing all its gains and sliding 1.75% for the year, according to an investor letter.
Both the funds were caught in the recent market turmoil that lopped off trillions of dollars from stocks, sent Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” the VIX index, to its highest level in almost two years. The rout also included an unwinding of carry trades, in which investors borrowed at low rates in Japan to fund purchases of higher-yielding assets elsewhere.
Khurana has never lost money in a year after starting his fund with money from investors including BlueCrest’s billionaire founder Michael Platt.
“We have reduced positions at portfolio level in response to ongoing market stress,” the firm told clients. “Our team is monitoring the portfolio and risk levels and we are adhering to our risk framework. Our unencumbered cash levels remain high (>70%),” it added.
A representative for Southern Ridges Capital, which has offices in Singapore and New York, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, while Eisler declined to comment.
Khurana started Southern Ridges with about $800 million after spending six years at BlueCrest, the London-based firm that now runs money only for Platt and his partners. As of early last year, Southern Ridges managed about $2.3 billion in assets.
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