The past four years have been a quite extraordinary time in credit markets – with the savage bust of 2007 and 2008 being followed by a swift and spectacular boom through 2009 and early 2010, turning again to growing uncertainty and bearishness over the past year or so.
Managing any credit fund through such a violent cycle would have been a challenge. But managing one that explicitly sets out to deliver consistent, low-vol and uncorrelated positive returns every year must have been even more of a challenge than most.
Yet that is just what Simon Finch, the manager of the CQS Credit Long/Short strategy, and his team at CQS have achieved since launching the fund as a standalone vehicle in April 2009 – having previously traded the strategy for around a year within the firm’s Capital Structure Arbitrage fund, which is closed to investment.
Having returned some 17% in...