Investment Fund Awards 2018

Wealth & Finance International - 2018 Investment Fund Awards 25 Established in 2007, LCJ is an independently managed investment firm, based in Geneva Switzerland. The firm’s founding partners are two seasoned Portfolio Managers, Conor MacManus and Jonathan Tullett, who co-manage the Strategy, and an experienced business and operations specialist, COO Leonora Kerry Keane. Drawing on this expertise, LCJ has, since inception, focused exclusively on managing the LCJ FX Macro Strategy. The firm is authorised and regulated by the Swiss National Financial Regulator, FINMA, and works diligently with its partners to ensure that it complies with all relevant regulations and offers its clients the support and service they need. Specifically, the firm’s LCJ FX Macro Strategy expresses macro fundamental and discretionary views though currencies. The strategy was originally conceived when Founders Conor and Jonathan were working together in the 1990s in order to improve the risk return capabilities of a fundamental FX trading strategy, by using the structural advantages of FX Options to manage downside risk and minimize loss crystallization. Over the years since inception, the strategy has exhibited extremely low correlations to its peers and benchmarks as well as the main asset indices. Created specifically to address a range of key challenges to investing in currencies, the LCJ FX Macro Strategy utilises the market and product experience of the Founders investing in the FX space. The main challenge is that , while fundamental macro-economic themes are reflected over time in the value of individual currencies in isolation and on a relative basis,, the problem facing investors in FX is that there are many factors that affect valuation levels on a short-term basis, creating significant market noise. Controlling downside risk and determining position size and scalability over time are therefore key to successfully investing in FX. To overcome these challenges, the strategy Jonathan and Conor created minimizes the effects of short term noise by allocating its pre-determined risk budget to premium-paid trade structures that exist over a multi- month investment horizon, thereby buying time for themes and economic fundamentals to emerge. By pre-determining overall portfolio and position level risk budgets at trade inception in this way, LCJ are defining the size and scalability of their investment. The strategy’s positioning naturally increases if they predict direction correctly, if the team predict direction incorrectly, then the positions naturally decrease while retaining the potential over time for upside, and controlling the absolute level of downside risk. Historically, the firm and strategy were launched just prior to the financial crisis, and so have necessarily and successfully navigated many periods of change within the industry and financial markets. The LCJ FX Strategy was launched in September 2007 with assets from management and equity owners in the firm in the flagship LCJ FX Fund, with UBS as Prime Broker, and has a predominantly institutional and professional investor base, and is able to offer daily liquidity and target specific volatility/return levels to suit investor requirements. The first few years were focused on building a track record for the strategy and in June 2009, having returned over 19% net for the Fund, LCJ was invited to launch the Strategy on the industry leading Deutsche Bank dB Select managed account platform. During this time, LCJ was successful in significantly growing AUM from Deutsche Bank’s institutional client base, and received further mandates from Citi bank, which launched the Citi Macro Access managed account platform, and from a Scandinavian bank, which allocated proprietary FX trading capital to LCJ through a managed account. LCJ Investments is a global macro investment manager with a specialized currency focus. Having recognised the firm in this year’s Fund Awards we profile it to learn more. FX Fund Manager of the Year 2018 - Switzerland LCJ Investments Later, in 2012 LCJ became a member of The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), and received its first nomination from Eurohedge for Currency & Commodity Fund of the Year, repeated subsequently in 2014, 2015, 2017 and in 2018. The following years, 2013, Citi bank were successful in raising a large mandate for LCJ from the wealth management division of a large European bank in the form of the Luxembourg-registered UCITS, and also won a UHNW mandate through Morgan Stanley’s managed account platform. Since the strategy was first created LCJ has won significant mandates from diverse range of institutional and professional investors, such as a Swiss multi-family office highly experienced in alternatives investing, a large European corporate treasury, a US fund of funds, and the alternative investment arm of a European bank. Additionally, LCJ has recently seen significant interest from global pension funds, appreciating the long track record of consistent alpha generation, and is currently working on a mandate for a large institutional Pension fund. Looking to the future, the team at LCJ believes the increasing global economic divergence, as the extraordinary monetary easing policies of recent years are unevenly unwound, and global trade patterns evolve, presents an improving and attractive opportunity set for a specialist fundamental FX macro strategy such as the LCJ FX Macro Strategy. As such, there are many exciting opportunities ahead for this practice and innovative strategy and the dedicated team behind it. Company: LCJ Investments Contact: Leonora Kerry-Keane Address: 116 Rue Du Rhône, Geneva, 1204, Switzerland Phone: 004122 7070261 Website: www.lcjinvestments.com FD180005