Norway’s Gersemi Asset Management took advantage of rising bulker company stock prices in February.
Its shipping fund began February mainly positioned long on tankers, but with a minor long position in containers, while being similarly short in dry bulk.
“We used the usual large capital inflow on the monthly dealing day to reduce our long exposure in oil tankers, with our oil tanker index falling significantly during the first week in February,” principal Joakim Hannsidahl explained.
Then Gersemi put into action its long-standing plan of going long on dry bulk around the Chinese New Year.
“Our long dry bulk positions have risen between 3% and 25% in less than one month,” the boss said.
The fund peaked at a 33% allocation towards bulkers in late February and has since reduced its position to 27% due to the rising equity pricing.
“Amid myriad other trades, most noteworthy was our short in BW LPG ahead of their fourth-quarter report, where our in-house estimates were far below consensus on dividend and Q1 earnings forecast. The share fell 9% on the report,” Hannisdahl added.
The fund also made trading gains over Golden Ocean’s and International Seaways’ fourth-quarter reports.
The company said it had logged another month of positive returns.
The fund rose 1.1% in value from January.
The value has continued to rise during the first days of March, it said.
“February was a highly volatile month where our light-footed strategy was instrumental to our positive returns,” the fund added.
Last month saw the highest turnover — a measure of trading activity — for the fund since inception at 102%, versus a 58% monthly average.
This showed the importance of being agile in a highly volatile sector, Gersemi said.
