StanCERA Picks Wellington Management for Macro Strategy

The Stanislaus County Employees’ Retirement Association (StanCERA) committed $56 million to Wellington Management’s Wellington Macro Strategies Fund, expanding the retirement system’s liquid absolute return strategy.

Wellington Macro offers a multi-portfolio manager structure, with a focus on foreign exchange and interest rates. Wellington provided StanCERA with a special founder’s fee reduction for investing in their relatively new commingled fund, which is led by Mark Sullivan.

The fund has 15-18 underlying strategies and PMs in the directional, non-directional, and extension bucket categories. The teams invest globally in rates, currencies, equities, and to a lesser extent, commodities.

Trustees also assessed Graham Capital’s Graham Proprietary Matrix offering. The fund was added in November 2020, after the board approved a 3% commitment to liquid absolute return strategies as part of its diversifying sub-portfolio. Invesco was also hired at that time but decided to close the strategy due to investor outflows.

In December 2023, the StanCERA board authorized raising the liquid absolute return allocation from 3% to 5%, and NEPC began collaborating with StanCERA investment professionals to find a new manager to complement the Graham approach.