MSIM’s baffling $400m options splurge
Funds owned or advised by the manager have spent vast sums on a USD/CNH strategy that appears not to have paid off
At first glance, the Growth Portfolio mutual fund offered by Morgan Stanley Investment Management seems fairly straightforward, holding a selection of tech-heavy US stocks like Cloudflare, Doordash and Snowflake. But over the past five years, the nearly $10 billion-asset fund has also spent $150 million on something seemingly unrelated – a string of options to buy US dollar against the renminbi, which would only pay off if the Chinese currency collapsed in value.
It’s not an isolated strategy
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