Chicago-based Balyasny Asset Management is a multi-billion multistrategy hedge fund firm, which specializes in long-short equity investing, and also has global macro oriented funds.
In March, their flagship fund Atlas Global , was down -0.06% , bringing the quarter-to date return to a -0.98%. Atlas Fundamental Trading was down -0.47% , bringing quarter to-date return to a -4.00%.
As of April 1, total firm AUM was $4B. Atlas Global Strategy AUM is $3.6B and is currently ‘soft’ closed. The Atlas Fundamental Trading Fund is currently open (as is the AFT Levered Fund which has been previously only open to employees). The current AFT strategy AUM is $425M close to the firm’s target of $750M.
The fund noted a mixed outlook for the future.
The fund managers believe that structural problems will negatively impact the global economy in the long term. However, as noted previously, since the expectation for slow growth globally persists, surprises to the upside will be particularly pronounced. The market certainly demonstrated this fact in the first few months of the year with a large equity rise across the global market.
The fund likes to highlight key metrics in order to assess the trajectory of US growth. One of them is the ECRI Weekly Leading Index. Equity prices have historically followed this index fairly closely, occasionally with a 1-3 month lag. Its recent downturn underscores the notable softening across manufacturing indices, which indicates a possible coming decline within the next three months.
It was further noted that the US has two main drivers of growth going forward. The positives are the strength of the manufacturing sector and the boom in natural gas production.
