“Investor flows have historically been weak in March as early year allocations tend to arrive in February, however March 2015 inflows were well above the last five-year March average of $5.3 billion,” says eVestment which concluded its Q1 Hedge Fund Asset Flows Report. New investments more than offset a slightly weaker asset-weighted performance in the period.

 

“Macro hedge fund flows appear to have turned a corner after eight consecutive months of redemptions ending in February. February inflows were only slightly positive, but macro funds added $1.7 billion in March,” says eVestment vice president and head of research Peter Laurelli.

 

Among the findings, investors continued to sell their commodity hedge fund exposure in March with outflows at $1.2 billion, which brings first quarter outflows to $1.5 billion. March was the sixth month of redemptions from commodity funds in the last eight, says the report.

 

Investors added an estimated $9.4 billion to the multi-strategy hedge fund universe in the period, bringing first quarter totals to $20.4 billion. The inflow is slightly above that of the first quarter last year, and well above the last five year's first quarter average inflow. Multi-strategy funds took in an estimated $44.4 billion in 2014, the report adds.

 

Managed futures funds enjoyed a solid three-month inflow streak ending with $5.8 billion of new assets in March and $10 billion in the first quarter. Managed futures inflows in the first three months were the group’s first positive quarter since first quarter of 2012 and their largest quarterly inflow since the second quarter of 2008.

 

Meanwhile, event driven fund flows were negative in March at $2.2 billion. The outflow marks the third month of redemptions in the last four for the universe, while activist fund flows were virtually flat in March. The event driven subset attracted an estimated $1.1 billion of new capital in the first quarter, despite the broad event driven group seeing outflows of $1.4 billion in the period.