Hedge funds that shorted sterling make gains

Tokyo

AS the market reeled from a historic jolt last Friday that sent the pound to a three-decade low and reverberated across global markets, some hedge fund managers were racking up gains.

The GCI Systematic Macro Fund surged 10.5 per cent on Friday, thanks in part to a short bet on sterling and a wager that the yen would surge in value, said Kyo Yamamoto, the head of the quantitative research and strategy group at Tokyo-based GCI Asset Management. The PruLev Global Macro Fund in Singapore gained 6.2 per cent on June 24, largely because of a surge in bonds in the UK, the US, Australia and South Korea, as the fund positioned itself for a "black swan" event, the fund's manager Norman Tang said via e-mail.