Third Wave Global Macro Fund: Third Wave Global Investors

When Robert Birnbaum and Laurence Smith formed their hedge fund, they had a hard time deciding what to name it. They discussed various options and then realised, as Birnbaum says: "There was the first wave of hedge fund investing, which was to go short to protect your capital. There was the second wave, when managers would 'have a good idea and leverage it'." Then there was what he calls "the third wave, of putting risk and return together to get consistency of returns". So Third Wave Global Investors was the name and a fund was born.

Third Wave Global Macro Fund now has $497 million in assets, some of which are invested in managed accounts. The fund uses a global macro strategy. This integrates quantitative and qualitative techniques to create a sustainable, repeatable process for generating good long/short trading ideas and sizing them in optimal fashion.

"A strength of the strategy is that risk management is built into every decision," says Birnbaum, president and chief operating officer of the company based in Greenwich