Institutional HF survey reveals some startling shifts in opinion during the past year
Mar 29th, 2009 | Filed under: Hedge Fund Industry Trends, Today's Post“USA Today has come out with a new survey – apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population.” - David Letterman
For all intents and purposes, the hedge fund “industry” has only been around for a decade. Like snowflakes, no two years have been the same (or even close). So polling industry participants is generally seen as the only way to keep a finger on the pulse of the industry.
The trouble is, precious few surveys are able to compare changes between one year and the next. Without such comparisons, survey results usually serve only as good headline fodder, not as an indication of any material changes. For example, who knows if a result such as “50% say they plan to invest in hedge funds” is atypical or not? (Perhaps 60% of investors planned to invest in hedge funds last year. Perhaps it was only 30%…).
State Street published the results from a survey last week that has been conducted for several years at the annual Global Absolute Return Congress (“Global ARC“) in Boston, London and San Francisco. So we were particularly interested to see how the opinions of institutional investors in the October 2008 edition compared to those of October 2007. Our analysis of the report (which is available for free by emailing State Street here) focuses exclusively on changes over time.
Stay the Course?
The survey found that 75% of investors did not plan to modify their asset allocations as a result of the (then) recent financial turmoil. This sounds like a vote of confidence for the industry. But it appears that many investors may have already adjusted their hedge fund allocations by the time they showed up in Boston last fall… More…
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