AllAboutAlpha.com  rolled into the Chicago earlier today.  So if you see our tour bus rolling around the Windy City with the giant alpha symbol on the side, please wave and say hello. It’s tough to drive a bus and read hedge fund research at the same time though (until leading investment journals launch a “books-on-tape” service).  [...]

Managed accounts are generally seen as a way to avoid throwing out the hedge fund strategy baby with the hedge fund legal structure bathwater. But managed accounts also run the risk of compounding some of the very ills they set out to cure.

Many surveys of the hedge fund industry lack a benchmark against which to gauge results. But here's one that have been running for several years now - with roughly the same sample population. What it reveals about 2008 is startling.

What do hedge funds have to do with double black diamond ski runs? Read and find out.

A report covering the entire fund management industry shows that alternative investments remain a somewhat less-than-significant proportion of all assets under management.

Think you can call the results of this year's hedge fund championships? See what the rest of the global hedge fund community has in their bracket for this year.

Last week, the International Organization of Securities Commissions provided its input to the upcoming G-20 Summit. A full reading reveals a notably diplomatic and balanced view of the role of hedge funds in global financial markets.

"Decoupling" is back. Only this time it refers not to the disconnection of global economies, but to the disconnection between hedge funds and the equity markets. But it doesn't end there. Some individual hedge fund strategies are also decoupling from the broader hedge fund industry.

In 1513, Niccolo Machiavelli warned Lorenzo d' Medici, ruler of the Florentine Republic about "the inconsistency of prosperity". Did "Black Swan" author Nassim Taleb go back in time to advise Machiavelli? Read this and make up your own mind.

It wasn't long ago that investors were graduating from simple investable hedge fund indices to more sophisticated hedge fund replication products for their passive hedge fund exposure. Now, it seems that "simple" is back as some investors are willing to stomach the high hedge fund fees in exchange for transparency and liquidity.

Is merger arbitrage going the way of the dodo bird? Perhaps, according to two researchers.

A survey of European investment professionals suggests that out-dated knowledge may be to blame for failure to adopt modern portfolio construction techniques.

Survey results published last week by an accounting firm focusing on affluent investors suggest that one segment is now more critical than others to hedge funds' growth plans: affluent investors. Go figure...

Research has previously shown that hedge fund investors, like all investors, tend to exhibit "return chasing" behavior. Now a new academic study shows the real cost of this unfortunate proclivity.

Separately, a group of pension funds and a group of financial advisers recently demanded more flexibility to invest in alternatives in an effort to get their clients out of their current financial mess.