South Africa’s hedge fund industry is dynamic, sophisticated and growing, and at its heart are the women whose expertise and leadership continue to shape its future. Jeleze Hattingh, CIO and portfolio manager at Southchester Investment Managers, is one of those women.
Jeleze’s story was included in a recent special edition of HedgeNews Africa: Women in Hedge Funds: South Africa’s Leaders, Innovators and Trailblazers. By way of personal stories and candid reflections, the publication highlights and celebrates the remarkable individuals who are strengthening the country’s alternative-investment ecosystem. They break new ground, create opportunity and lead with resilience, as does Jeleze. This is the profile published in Hedge News Africa.
Jeleze has been in the financial industry for 24 years, spending the past six years specifically in hedge fund management. [She] specialises in portfolio management, covering fixed income, risk management and financial modelling. She has an MSc (Business Mathematics and Information Studies), specialising in Financial Risk Management, from the North-West University in Potchefstroom.
Jeleze was initially enrolled to do actuarial studies when she stumbled on an advert in the Sunday newspapers for a specialised Master’s degree – a ‘new’ field of study sponsored by ABSA.
“I was part of the first cohort to complete the five-year course, the last six months of which was spent doing a practical project with ABSA’s Enterprise Risk Management team in Johannesburg,” she says.
“I am a bit of a nerd at heart, perpetually reading and tumbling down rabbit holes on any topic that captures my curiosity.”
She also holds a CFA charter – a pursuit she took up after a challenge from a flatmate in London – which led her to behavioural finance and, from there, to the Chartered Market Technician (CMT) designation, the technical analysis equivalent of the CFA. Most recently, Jeleze earned the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) charter, driven by a desire to explore alternative investment areas in more depth.
Jeleze first learned about hedge funds while working at Deloitte in the UK as a risk consultant in the mid-2000s.
“One of my first projects involved reassessing the market risk metrics of a large, well respected international bank after they had to close a US$2 billion hedge fund due to large losses hidden behind inaccurate risk measures,” she recalls. “This was just prior to the Great Financial Crisis in 2008, and I learned that there is a massive disparity between investing according to the spirit versus the letter of a mandate.”
It was then she realised that, essentially, she wanted to go from refereeing the match (ie: being the risk manager trying to set boundaries but only really seeing the portfolios after the fact) to being a player on the field (ie: the portfolio manager making the decisions).
Having started her career doing financial modelling and risk implementation in local and international banks, she then moved into risk consultancy, and from there into long-only asset management.
“After 18 years in the financial markets, I moved into hedge funds,” she says. “The biggest evolution to me across the industry would be the integration and high correlation across the various sectors and players … slowly but surely the silos are being integrated.”
In her personal life, Jeleze is an adventurer, and admits to being comfortable taking “calculated risks”, which from the outside can look extreme but are driven by analysis, training and risk assessment. This has led her on some exciting journeys, such as scuba diving beyond 100 metres, climbing mountains and driving through Africa.
“That same approach lies beneath my investment philosophy, which I can best summarise as one of calculated risks, coupled with a healthy dose of optimism about the world, scepticism about what could go wrong, and planning for all possible scenarios.”
Her calculated risk philosophy is reflected in a quote from John Mallory, the son of Mount Everest pioneer George Mallory, on whether or not his father had reached the summit of Everest: ‘To me the only way you achieve a summit is to come back alive; the job’s half done if you don’t get down again.’
One significant professional and personal challenge for Jeleze was to walk numerous routes of the Camino de Santiago through Portugal and Spain, while working full-time.
“Over the course of three years, I walked more than 2,000km with my laptop and second screen in a backpack, working from my Camino home,” she says. “This taught me that anything is possible once you set your mind to it. Be comfortable with the unexpected and be open to embrace the various ways of seeing and thinking about the world and the markets.”
Jeleze believes that, on an individual level, success in the hedge fund industry requires “eternal curiosity”. She enjoys the ever-changing nature of her job and the people she interacts with daily.
“[Success requires] curiosity about what makes the markets tick, about the interconnectivity/butterfly-flapping-its-wings mentality, and the human behaviour driving it all. We also need integrity and authenticity in an AI world.”
At the investment management level, teamwork is key to success. “The only way to consistently achieve success in our industry is by recognising the importance of the collective rather than the individual – the investment team making the calls, the operational and finance teams making sure background processes run smoothly, or the board overseeing the strategic direction of the business as a whole.”
When it comes to her own investments, Jeleze is concerned about elevated price levels and correlation across all asset classes, and is reinvesting in Southchester’s own funds.
“Until the next big market correction has come (yes, I do believe it is a when and not an if), I prefer to park my money in funds where, firstly, I know what quality assets we hold, and secondly I know how conservatively they are being managed,” she says.
She credits her mother – who for the longest time believed she worked as a bank teller – and her first boss at Standard Bank as her biggest career influences.
“In completely different ways, they both ‘forced’ me to clarify my thought processes so that I could explain complexity in simple terms, in so doing distilling the magnitude of information and noise around us into the bits that really matter,” she says.
Jeleze says there is a lot of lip-service being paid to increasing diversity in the industry, but at the end of the day women still need to prove themselves to a greater extent, in an ego-driven industry.
“As more role models come to the fore, and as women stand their ground and find their own voices, this should continue to improve over time,” she says. “Don’t try and be like anyone else – be the best version of yourself. And while you do that, be open to any opportunity that comes your way, however wayward it might seem, as it might just be the open door that you have been waiting for, albeit in a different disguise.”
“One of the most significant challenges I faced was to not let my ego cloud my judgement, yet to still stand my ground for my views and convictions,” she says.
She adds that the relatively small size of the hedge fund industry and the threat of AI automation potentially taking over some entry-level and junior roles are both hurdles to increased female representation.
“We need to see the industry growing and a willingness to employ and train new entrants,” she says. “That said, I do believe that there are more opportunities for women in the alternative investment arena than in the long-only equity space. It is simply a matter of sticking up your hand and showing that you want to be there.”
Reproduced with permission from HedgeNews Africa.