(Bloomberg) -- Glen Point Capital, the $2 billion hedge-fund firm that manages money for clients including George Soros, extended gains in its global macro fund to about 17 percent in the first half of the year, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The fund, which bets on macroeconomic trends with a focus on emerging markets, built on a 6.5 percent first quarter gain that was driven by a rally in developing-nation assets and added about 10 percent in the second quarter, the person said. The strong showing marks a turnaround after the fund lost money in 2016, its first full year of trading, and in January.
Glen Point has made most of its money this year off interest rates and currencies, including a wager that the so-called "Trump trade" would reverse for the Mexican peso, said the person. The nation's currency plunged 17 percent last year amid Donald Trump's anti-trade rhetoric, and has since bounced back 13 percent -- the biggest gain among major currencies -- as traders concluded concerns were overdone.
A spokesman for Glen Point declined to comment.
Glen Point also been betting on falling interest rates through the local swaps market in Brazil, India and Mexico, where the central bank last month raised its key rate for the seventh time in a row to 7 percent. Several economists are now forecasting that the cycle of rate hikes in Latin America's second-largest economy has drawn to a close.
Glen Point's emerging-markets focus has helped it substantially outperform the average macro hedge fund, which rose just 1.3 percent on an asset-weighted basis in the first five months of the year, according to Hedge Fund Research Inc.
The firm was started in 2015 by Neil Phillips and Jonathan Fayman, who previously managed a similar fund for BlueBay Asset Management.
To contact the reporter on this story: Katia Porzecanski in New York at kporzecansk1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Alan Mirabella, Vincent Bielski
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