Stefan Bollharder, former head of Asia proprietary trading at Julius Baer in Zurich, has rolled out Hedge Vision Japan, a Japan-focused long/short fund on Nov. 8. The strategy was seeded by the Arundel Emerging Managers Fund, a fund-of-funds run by London-based Arundel Iveagh Investment Management.
The fund will take 30-50 positions in equities and equity-linked investments, said Philippe Guillard, managing partner and co-founder of Hedge Vision Capital, the Altendorf, Switzerland-based investment manager. It will hedge market exposure through index derivatives. Bollharder, the fund's portfolio manager, will screen the market for pre-defined technical patterns, but the decisions about which positions to take will be made by other traders working Japanese hours. The fund will turn over its positions frequently--its holding period will usually range from a couple of days to a couple of weeks. Guillard said the fund's ability to be net-short was its greatest selling point, since most hedge funds trading Japanese equities were exposed as extremely long-biased when the market tanked earlier this year.
The new fund comes in euro, U.S. dollar and yen share classes and carries an investment minimum of USD100,000 or its euro/yen equivalents. Morgan Stanley is the prime broker.
