Hedge Fund With 30% Return Sees Assets Under Management Tripling

(Bloomberg) -- Runestone Capital Fund wants to triple its assets under management this year.

The volatility hedge fund, which had a 30 percent return in 2016, almost doubled Runestone's size in March to $32 million after big inflows, according to founder and portfolio manager Rune Madsen.

“We have a realistic goal to reach $100 million in total AUM for this year,” Madsen said in an email on Friday. “However, we have seen with others that when larger tickets start to come in, growth can be larger than previously anticipated.”

London-based Runestone has hired Greg Sperrazza, a former private banker from JPMorgan Chase & Co., who's based in New York City, to launch Runestone Capital U.S. Fund.

The absolute return fund, which started in 2015, targets an average annual return of more than 20 percent and is always directional, making bets that one-day volatility will either rise or fall. It bases investments in U.S. equity index volatility strictly on a quantitative model and statistical probabilities.

The Norwegian investment company, Watrium AS, made a “‘substantial” investment in both the fund and Runestone Capital Ltd. in March, according to Madsen.

“Their reason for investing is the risk-adjusted performance of the strategy, the non-correlated features, the fact that volatility is always in movement so the strategy will never run out of investment opportunities and clearly the return potential,” he said.

--With assistance from Mikael Holter

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonas Cho Walsgard in Oslo at jchowalsgard@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Veronica Ek at vek@bloomberg.net, Jonas Bergman, Tasneem Hanfi Brögger