Danny Scinto, BFAM Partners’ former head of foreign exchange volatility and rates trading, is joining the $9.1 billion macro hedge fund firm Alphadyne Asset Management as a portfolio manager, said a person with knowledge of the matter.
(Bloomberg) — Danny Scinto, BFAM Partners’ former head of foreign exchange volatility and rates trading, is joining the $9.1 billion macro hedge fund firm Alphadyne Asset Management as a portfolio manager, said a person with knowledge of the matter.
Scinto will start in Hong Kong this month and is expected to manage money in an Asia macro and foreign exchange volatility strategy for the New York-based firm from the start of May, the person added, asking not to be identified discussing private information. Alphadyne and Scinto declined to comment.
Asian countries’ economic cycles are decoupling from major developed economies such as the US, creating profitable opportunities and chances for diversification for macro investors who trade across rate, currency, equity and commodity markets. Multistrategy firms such as Millennium Management and Balyasny Asset Management have also been hiring in this area.
Alphadyne invests primarily in the interest-rate and currency markets across North America, Europe and Asia, taking bets either on directional moves or the relative value of such assets, according to a regulatory filing. The 18-year-old firm is led by Chief Investment Officer Philippe Khuong-Huu, who had stints with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. before founding the company.
Its flagship Alphadyne Global Rates fund returned 17% last year. In the first quarter of 2023, it gained about 3.5%, said the person.
Asia Presence
Alphadyne already has about one-third of its nearly 60 investment professionals based in Asia and views the region as a core component of its investment strategy, said the person. Scinto’s addition brings a somewhat different strategy to the firm, which has investors in Hong Kong who specialize in emerging markets macro and Chinese sovereign rates trading.
A former JPMorgan currency options trader, Scinto spent nearly eight years with Benjamin Fuchs’s BFAM, rising to become one of its most senior staff members. He left the firm last year.
A strong profit driver for BFAM in previous years, his team lost money on European currency volatility trades between 2021 and 2022, Bloomberg reported in July. That included wrong-way bets on the Turkish lira in 2021 and the Russian ruble in 2022. Still, his team made more money for the fund over the years than its recent losses, people previously said.
Hong Kong-based BFAM oversaw about $5 billion at its peak. After nine straight years of gains, it lost nearly 11% in 2021 and 26% last year. While currency volatility bets contributed to its woes, most of the losses came from investments in Chinese real estate developer bonds that soured after Beijing’s clampdown on credit in the industry.
With assets now a quarter of the firm’s peak size, BFAM founder Fuchs has since shifted focus to more liquid investments, such as stock and currency volatility, convertible bonds and block trades, resuming more of the trading himself.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.