Former BlueMountain Capital fixed-income head Colin Teichholtz is joining Jeffrey Talpins’ discretionary global macro hedge fund firm Element Capital as head of markets, a newly created role, according to a person familiar with the situation.
At Element, Teichholtz will research macro investment strategies and policy developments as a senior member of the portfolio team, working with Talpins and others, the person said. He will join the firm in November and will be based in New York. Element declined to comment.
Element has been one of the fastest-growing — and best-performing — hedge funds employing global macro, a strategy that has sputtered in recent years as traditional techniques have faltered in the wake of quantitative easing, reduced market volatility, and other factors.
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Element, founded in 2005, has generated average gains of approximately 20 percent in its flagship fund since inception, the person said. The fund is up 8 percent this year through September, surpassing the average macro hedge fund gain of 6.46 percent reported by data tracker HFR, and returned more than 17 percent last year, according to the person. Element now manages $18 billion, up from $8 billion just three years ago.
At BlueMountain, Teichholtz managed teams that traded developed market interest rate products, according to his bio. Before that, he was a partner at Pine River Capital, co-managing several fixed income funds. He previously served as co-head of interest rates and head trader for agency mortgage-backed securities at Morgan Stanley. He is a member of the Office of Financial Research Advisory Committee at the U.S. Treasury.
Element incorporates fundamental, systemic, and relative value macro analysis to build its positions, referring to its strategy as “modern macro,” according to the person familiar with the firm. Earlier this year, Element hired Richard Strutt from Man Group to oversee its execution research and technology.
