SALT
- Graticule, a macro asset manager based in Singapore, is now managing $3 billion.
- The firm returned all capital in 2023, when its flagship hedge fund collapsed.
- The firm, run by Adam Levinson, has a macro strategy that’s up nearly 30% this year.
Three years ago, Adam Levinson’s Singapore-based asset manager was the poster boy for the bond-market wreckage caused by Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse.
Graticule Asset Management Asia, which started 2023 with roughly $3 billion, saw its flagship macro hedge fund lose more than 25%, mostly in the days following the bank’s failure, thanks to wrong-way bets on short-term interest rates. The firm shut down the strategy in the first quarter of 2023 and returned capital to investors.
Now, Graticule is once again managing $3 billion, a person close to the firm told Business Insider, having rebuilt its assets under management to where they were prior to the collapse.
Instead of a hedge fund, the firm is managing capital for backers via separately managed accounts, this person said, including a macro strategy that is up 28% this year through the end of August. The average macro fund, according to hedge fund research firm PivotalPath, is up less than 6% through the same period.
SMAs are an increasingly common way for allocators to access alternative investment strategies, as the structure provides greater transparency into the underlying strategy than a traditional hedge fund. For aspiring asset manager founders, it can be a simpler way to launch a new firm or strategy.
The firm has also “streamlined” head count by using AI agents to assist investment staff, the person close to the firm said, reducing costs.
Regulatory filings show that the firm has 18 total staffers, including investment talent in offices in New York and Los Angeles, as well as at its headquarters in Singapore. At the start of 2023, regulatory filings show that the firm had 55 staffers.
Levinson is well-known in the Asia investing scene. A former Goldman Sachs prop trader, he was an executive at Fortress before spinning out and starting Graticule in 2015.