The term “portable alpha” is still a relatively new addition to the popular lexicon.  As we’ve written on these pages, the term itself seems to morph on a regular basis to encapsulate the literal “porting” of alpha between asset classes to the combination of hedge funds and swaps.  Issues like active management fees, regulation, risk measurement, and market efficiency seem to weave their way in and out of the various definitions of portable alpha.

Now someone has finally brought many of these concepts together in one place.  “Portable Alpha: Theory and Practice” (US link) edited by PIMCO’s Sabrina Callin has just hit bookstores.  If you read Peter Bernstein’s “Capital Ideas Evolving” (see related posting), you may recall that PIMCO is considered to be one of the early pioneers in portable alpha strategies.

Naturally, we’re working our way through it right now and are so far impressed with the holistic nature of the content (including contributions by Rob Arnott, Bill Gross and several PIMCO managers).

Yesterday, AAA media partner HedgeWorld ran an interview with Callin for its premium subscribers.  With permission from our friends at HedgeWorld, we have re-printed the interview in its entirety below.

But before you read the interview, here’s a quick footnote.  It appears that Portable Alpha has a lot of fans in the UK and Singapore.  A Google search of this book returns the publisher’s country-specific websites in the following order: UK, Singapore, US, Germany, Canada.  A flagrantly un-scientific observation for sure.  But curious nonetheless…

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