Macro Funds

A global macro strategy is a type of hedge fund strategy that bases its holdings in several different equity, fixed income, currency, commodities and future markets, mainly on the overall economic and political views of different countries or their macroeconomic principles. For instance if a manager thinks that the US was heading into recession they may short sell stocks and future contracts on major US indices or the US dollar.

Global macro funds build portfolios around the predictions and projections of large-scale events country-wide, continental and global scale, creating opportunistic investment schemes to get the most out of macroeconomic and geopolitical trends. Global macro funds are thought to be among the least restricted funds available due to the fact that they tend to place any type of trade they choose using any type of security available.

They are many different types of global macro funds existing in 2016, most of which aim to profit on numerous systemic and market risk factors. Discretionary global macro funds produce portfolios at the asset class level based on a high level view of global markets. This particular type of global macro fund is considered to be the most flexible as it allows managers to go long or short with any type of asset.

Commodity trading advisor (CTA) global macro funds use several investment products but instead of making portfolios built on high level views, algorithms based on price and trend are used to assist in producing portfolios and finish the fund’s trades. Efficient global funds use essential analysis to create portfolios and perform trades using algorithms. This particular type of fund is a hybrid of discretionary global macro and CTA funds.