Asian hedge funds: Comfortable with quant
Good times for distressed debt
| “Derivatives in Asia were quite a scary concept a few years ago” Steve Diggle, Artradis |
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Steve Diggle makes more money in down markets, so it might therefore be surprising that the hedge fund management company for which he is managing partner, Artradis, is Asia focused. Artradis has five funds now, with its flagship fund having about $700 million in assets under management. Diggle and his partners focus on derivatives, warrants, options, convertibles and other parts of the capital structure, and trade volatility. “Derivatives in Asia were quite a scary concept a few years ago. But there are a lot of exotic markets in Asia, and we said that if we could find enough anomalies to make some money at all times, we could use the surplus to buy volatility,” says Diggle. “In some ways it was a terrible idea. We launched in May 2002 when volatility was disappearing but at least no one else was doing what we do.”
