 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
The rise of the hedge fund industry does not lend itself to easy characterization. The technology industry, for example, can point to the development of the microchip, the PC, the Internet etc. as milestones in the stepwise evolution that has led us to today's wonders, the iPad, Google Maps, and Wii Yoga. But the history of the hedge fund industry can probably better be described as a history of people, not technologies. The hedge fund industry is one of personalities - many of ...
Special to AllAboutAlpha.com by: James Burron, CAIA Except for those of us who have lived or worked in the woods, many would not see timberland as an investible asset class with benefits that are ideally suited to institutional investors. Sure, there are trees everywhere, but not all of them are suitable for investment say Tim Cayen, Director of Business Development at Hancock Timber Resource Group and Eva Greger, Managing Director with GMO Renewable Resources LLC who each recently addressed a gathering ...
In an age of mature, highly liquid markets where arbitrageurs exploit ever smaller market inefficiencies, it's easy to become jaded about the prospects of any manager to produce alpha over the long term. In his (excellent) new book "More Money Than God", Sebastian Mallaby wonders if Julian Robertson's 26% annual return between 1980 and 2000 was skill or statistical fluke...
"...Over the 21 calendar years in which Tiger's investment decisions were controlled by Robertson, the fund was up seventeen of them...Could it be that Robertson was merely lucky? The laws of ...
Baseball fans (and players) look forward their sport's annual "All Star Break" to enjoy some time away from the game, celebrate it's history, take stock of what has transpired and look ahead to the second half of the season. Credit Suisse's semi-annual Hedge Fund Industry Review does essentially the same thing. According to the firm and its partner, Dow Jones Indexes, 51 of every 100 hedge funds hit mid-year with a winning record - leading to overall industry returns of a whopping 0.6% (referred to as "muted" by CS.)
In sports, being one ...
It’s tough to tell just how institutional investors really feel about funds of hedge funds (FoHFs) these days.
For a while it seemed like they’d given up on the concept, thanks to the credit crisis, lock-ups and other fun stuff. Then it seemed like they were willing to give them another go, even though returns weren’t exactly off the charts.
More recently a few studies even seemed to affirm that all was still okay for them, like how our "Paranoia the Destroyer of funds of hedge funds or not" from not too ...
Since the birth of the hedge fund performance fee over 60 years ago (see our "Performance fees as old as portfolio management itself"), this form of compensation has drawn fire from some investors and professional jealousy from asset managers who did not use it. At the heart of the problem is the "free option" that upside participation with no downside represents. Making matters worse, this option - like all others - is worth more when volatility is high. And since the managers themselves influence the volatility of their funds, this represents a serious ...
Like sticking your hand under scalding hot water, it is human nature to very much steer clear of getting burned twice, especially when it really hurts. But it is equally human nature to quickly forget how bad the pain was and be tempted to test the water again. Apparently pension funds are no different, judging from the results of Citi Prime Finance’s debut research paper, “The Liquidity Crisis & Its Impact on the Hedge Fund Industry” ...
Active/passive separation - the central foundation of this publication, and a driving force behind the growth of both the ETF industry and the alternative investment industry - has seen better times. It turns out that disentangling manager skill from the rising (or falling) tides of markets wasn't as straightforward (i.e. linear) as was once thought. The result: portable alpha and other alpha/beta separation techniques was kind of dragged under the bus by the mass media over the ...
A few weeks ago, we told you about a study of US pension funds showing that smaller funds experienced better performance than their larger peers. This was counter-intuitive to us - and to several readers - given the assumption that larger funds had more resources and therefore could afford to find better investment opportunities. It looks like small pension funds are the only Davids than can run circles around their larger Goliath competitors. A recent study of private ...
They like them! They still really, really like them! Or at least they don't seem to hate them! That seemed to be the message from Towers Watson’s Global Alternative Investment Survey released this past week – at least in terms of how pension funds feel about funds of hedge funds. According to the annual survey (click here for the press release, or click here to download the PDF directly), about 50% of all assets managed by alternative investment ...
