While the Edhec Risk and Asset Management Research Centre is bigger, smarter and better–connected than AllAboutAlpha.com, both organizations share the same genetic blueprint. Edhec’s Lionel Martellini confirmed this fact this morning in his introduction to day two of the university-affiliated organization’s annual hedge fund conference in London. Edhec sees alternative investments as a (the) central issue in institutional portfolio management and believes that we need stronger links between research and practice.

Some would say that this overstates the importance of emerging asset classes. But Martellini points to two unique aspects of alternative investments that are fundamentally unique: non-normality and data integrity. The introduction of higher moments such as skew and kurtosis le to an explosion of data since correlation was now joined by co-skew and co-kurtosis. These co-moments add exponentially to the amount of information required for portfolio construction. To compound things, monthly data that is susceptible to “smoothing” makes alternative investment research a whole new ball game for academics and practitioners.

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