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Browse by CategoryHome » Category List » Regulation
Is the mutual fund industry competitive enough?25 June 2008
But price competition seems to have bypassed one particular fixed-cost business - the money management business. This, according to an article in the Journal of Investing that was made available for free recently. The paper by John Haslem of the University of Maryland, Kent Baker of the American University and David Smith of SUNY at Albany has the benign-sounding title “Identification and Performance of Equity Mutual Funds with High Management Fees and Expense Ratios”. But don’t be fooled. The authors rail against what they see as a lack of price competition in the US (and by extension the global-) mutual fund industry before examining the relationship between fees and performance. They even name names - highlighting the US mutual funds with the highest relative fees in the land. In their words:
Comments »A closer look at the CSX/TCI and Bear Stearns cases21 June 2008
Many of the facts surrounding each case have been obfuscated by sensational reporting. CNN’s Lou Dobb’s demanded, for example, that US legislators block the hostile take-over of CSX by London-based activist hedge fund TCI on national security grounds. Likewise, many mass media outlets seem to have bought into prosecutors’ arguments that the duo who ran Bear Stearns’ now infamous CDO fund were personally responsible for the entire global credit crunch.
Comments »Phil Goldstein Update11 June 2008
The latest battle is over his First Amendment right to communicate with the public (see previous posting). Current US regulations prevent investors under a certain wealth threshold from investing in unregulated investment funds (collectively “hedge funds” - although that’s a misnomer). Goldstein contends that he has the right to free speech however, even if that speech is about his hedge fund. Further, this right to free speech, argues Goldstein, is not in conflict with the SEC’s rules barring any particular group from actually investing in hedge funds. Reports Fortune:
Comments »ECB touches on some hedge fund myths in new report10 June 2008
The stated purpose of the report is:
As usual, June’s edition (released on Monday) makes some interesting observations about hedge funds and their potential role in “financial crises”… Hedge funds use relatively little leverage
Comments »Respected columnist warns on hedge funds, prompting response from AIMA chapter27 May 2008Amongst public relations professionals, there is an axiom that goes something like this: In the absence of the complete story, journalists are forced to create their own conclusions. Many companies have learned that starving the news media of the facts they demand often backfires. In such a situation, journalists a) have no choice but to attempt to fill in the gaps with conjecture and b) often do so totally unchallenged. So “filling in the gaps” is actually a very rational response when you think about it. A column on Monday by one of Canada’s most respected commentators makes this point in spades. In a piece entitled “Hedge Funds: the credit crunch’s enigma“, Globe & Mail columnist Eric Reguly makes a series of remarks about hedge funds that even he suggests is based on little, if any, hard facts. Clearly miffed about another drive-by smearing, the Canadian Chapter of AIMA (the Alternative Investment Management Association) followed its parent organization’s lead this week by speaking out - this time in a letter to Reguly obtained by AllAboutAlpha.com yesterday. As you may recall, AIMA’s London headquarters issued a rare rebuke of hedge fund media coverage last month in the form of a press release quoting the organization’s Chief Executive (see related posting, read press release). Taken together, these responses suggest AIMA is taking a more active stance on educating the media and the public at large about alternative investments. And that’s a good thing. Here’s what Reguly said about hedge funds on Monday:
Comments »Massachusetts slams barn door, watches horse run down the lane to New York22 May 2008
The Secretary of State for Massachusetts William Galvin issued a cease and desist order to a fund manager earlier this week after a 2 week investigation that turned up a panoply of alleged regulatory breeches dating back over the past decade. The tale would end there if it weren’t for the fact that any story including the words “Galvin” and “hedge fund” is sure to generate a lot of interest. As you may recall, this was the same William Galvin who mixed it up with hedge fund manager Phil Goldstein recently over his unsecure website (see related posting). So it would appear that this just might be another attempt to draw (not entirely unwarranted) attention to potential pitfalls of not requiring all investment managers, including hedge funds to register with authorities. But while it appears as though the manager in this case may have indeed been in breach of securities regulations, we have trouble believing for a minute that this case was randomly targeted by the state. In addition to allegedly selling units of his fund to investors that did not meet minimum wealth levels, the complaint suggests that the manager, Michael Regan, may have also lost all investors’ money. The question remains, however, was any loss a result of a lack of some kind of oversight?
Comments »Requiem for another attempt at hedge fund regulation12 May 2008
The SEC set the example with its attempt to make hedge fund register back in 2006. Now the California Department of Corporations’ attempt to register hedge funds seems to have also met an untimely demise. HedgeWorld chronicles the whole sorry affair in detail… As HedgeWorld points out, the proposed regulation would have required all funds not already voluntarily registered with the SEC to register with the Golden State. But to its surprise, the government of California found out that hedge funds would just leave the state to avoid the hassle (who could have known, really…). In what appears to be a move to save face, California government officials said that “in light of the ongoing actions of federal regulators”, they would hold off on any further action on the regulatory front. Apparently, new regulations were “premature”. (Indeed, the time to drive hedge funds out of your state is later, not now).
Comments »One of portable alpha’s originators says concept has evolved, in some cases, into something “vastly different”11 May 2008PIMCO’s Chris Dialynas knows portable alpha. In fact, commentators such as author Peter Bernstein generally agree that PIMCO essentially invented portable alpha back in the 1980s in the form of the firm’s “StocksPLUS” and “BondsPLUS” products (see related posting). Dialynas joined PIMCO way back in 1980 - surely before several of PIMCO’s current junior analysts were even born. So when he cautions the world about the movement he helped create, we’re probably best served by listening closely to what he has to say. He is the author of the epilogue to the new book “Portable Alpha Theory and Practice” by Sabrina Callin (see related posting). The chapter is ominously titled “Portable Alpha - The Final Chapter: Schemes, Dreams, and Financial Imbalances: ‘There Must Be More Money’” and it amounts to something of a sanity check on the current state of portable alpha. The entire chapter can be downloaded here at AllAboutAlpha.com. While cautious, Dialynas doesn’t actually question the underlying rationale behind alpha-beta separation or portable alpha itself. Instead, he expresses his concern that the techniques often used to create or isolate pure alpha (leverage and derivatives for example) have led to unacceptable risks to the financial system (think: Richard Bookstaber’s “Demons of Our Own Design” - see related posting). Says Dialynas:
Comments »Like US President, European Parliament also getting biased advice on hedge funds28 April 2008
While the conclusions were largely the same as the PWG (transparency guidelines etc.), the document takes a far more skeptical view of the industry (which, of course is no surprise given that the PWG committees were private sector committees). Here are some examples:
Comments »Weekly Newsreel - All the hedge fund regulation that’s fit to print20 April 2008
Like the bill in the 1970’s “Schoolhouse Rock” TV segments, we’re all going to need a lot of “patience and courage” since it looks like the never-ending debate over hedge fund regulation isn’t going away any time soon. Here’s the news from last week… Phil Goldstein, the man who has taken on government officials on everything from hedge fund registration, 13F filings, and hedge fund advertising (see related posting), is reportedly championing a new industry advocacy group, tentatively called the “Rational Regulatory Policy Institute”. It sounds like the recommendations from the President’s Working Group (PWG) may not be enough to satisfy skeptics like Soros…Apparently, we weren’t the only ones to note the excessive use of the word “should” in the recent hedge fund report from the President’s Working Group (see posting). According to Reuters, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said the PWG plan “is one small step when giant strides are needed…The Treasury Department’s proposals for greater transparency and risk disclosure must be mandatory or they are meaningless.”
Comments »President’s Working Group Hedge Fund Report - Interactive Version15 April 2008
The Asset Managers’ report contains a lot of material that hedge fund managers will recognize from their existing “due diligence questionnaires” - staple fare for institutional sales. But according to the text, the “bar is being raised”:
The big question now seems to be “will hedge funds adopt the recommendations?” The report leaves little doubt that its proposals are guidelines only. In fact, the word “should” appears 245 times in the report, while the word “must” appears only 11 times. Interestingly, the word “should” is followed by “consider” 18 times, “include” 12 times and “establish” 11 times.
Comments »A comment on the (latest) Goldstein case4 March 2008
According to the website Archive.org, which copies websites from across the Internet for historical posterity, the Bulldog Investors website has been in cryogenic suspension since the beginning of last year when the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin accused Goldstein of providing fund information to a non-qualified investor (for the record, he says it was a ”sting” operation). Since then the firm’s website has read simply “Site is currently being updated. Please check back soon. Thank you.” But Archive.org also shows what the site looked like before the latest brouhaha developed. While it’s not immediately clear if this archived version of the website contains the information that raised the ire of the SEC, its existence alone raises certain questions about the ability of the SEC to effectively control information in the Internet age.
Comments »Land of Enchantment apparently disenchanted with hedge funds21 February 2008
However, the firm also says that institutions remain nervous about their hedge fund investments:
Politicians are - quite rightly - sensitive to “headline risk”. One such politician is New Mexico’s Teresa Zanetti. She tabled a bill in the state legislature at the end of January that would ban hedge fund investment by the $15 billion New Mexico State Investment Council (although, according to Pensions & Investments, it would have allowed the State pension plans to continue investing in hedge funds).
Comments »New research on private equity surprises even some of the experts27 January 2008
But both of these contentions have been called into question by a new research report commissioned by the World Economic Forum and released in Davos on Friday. The report was led by Harvard’s VC guru Josh Lerner, was advised by a group including hedge fund demigod David Swensen of Yale and, according to its introduction, represents “an unprecedented endeavour linking active practitioners, leading academics, institutional investors in private equity and other constituents (such as organized labour) and boasts involvement from many parts of the globe.” The full report, “The Global Economic Impact of Private Equity”, is available here. It’s highly comprehensive to say the least and weighs in at 189 pages. But if you don’t have several hours to kill, you can always read the key findings in a press release available here. Lerner told a panel audience in Davos on Saturday that academic research on private equity hadn’t been as extensive in recent years as it had back in the 1980’s (full 70-minute panel video, official summary). Hence the impetus for this new round of papers and case studies. Perhaps due to this dearth of contemporary research, Lerner said he was surprised by a few of the report’s findings. Said Lerner:
Comments »Davos “Systemic Financial Risk” panel: most apropos in modern history25 January 2008
The WSJ reports, “Société Générale and the U.S. bankers feared on Wednesday that shares of the French bank would fall sharply when it disclosed the huge loss from the alleged rogue trader.” Fast forward now to Thursday 11am Eastern Time (5pm in Davos). JP Morgan’s CEO, James Dimon is a co-chair of this year’s Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum - and a member of one of the most apropos panels of all-time: ”Systemic Financial Risk”. Dimon was likely one the bankers whom the WSJ suggested may have had a late night on Wednesday. According to the webcast of this session, moderator James Schiro, CEO of Zurich Financial, kicked off the proceedings by saying:
Comments »Bookstaber’s pre-boarding call for the “flight to simplicity”10 January 2008
The labor of love now has 55,000 copies in print and has received accolades from The Economist, Business Week, Forbes, and (most prestigious of all) AllAboutAlpha.com. Bookstaber was in Toronto earlier this week addressing a sold-out event organized by AIMA (The Alternative Investment Management Association). I had the chance to join him for dinner before his speech and found him to be a casual and disarming kind of guy who is equally comfortable discussing championship dog breeding as he is dispensing sapient advice on the global financial system. He gives credit to others - particularly an editor at The Economist - who have recently advocated a “flight to simplicity” for adroitly summarizing the main idea behind his book. Bookstaber basically says that one can’t fight complexity with more complexity. Adding ever more complicated financial regulations can (and will) have unknown and unintended consequences for the functioning of capital markets.
Comments »Are restrictive regulations behind surfeit of “slightly positive results”?19 November 2007
Now a new study suggests one possible underlying reason for this phenomenon: regulation. Douglas Cumming and Le Qui of York University find evidence that “differences in hedge fund regulation significantly affects the propensity of fund managers to misreport monthly returns.” Specifically, they find less evidence of misreporting of returns in jurisdictions that allow hedge funds to be sold via “investment managers” since such third parties provide a de facto monitoring function. Conversely, they find more evidence of misreporting in jurisdictions that allow hedge funds to be sold in “wrappers” where managers generally experience less direct oversight.
Comments »Hedge fund back-tests and beer labels: sales manipulation or important disclosure?15 November 2007
First, A sober second thought… Headlines such as “Hedge funds marketing gets failing grade” and “HFs Mislead in Mysterious Ways“, “Securities regulator tightening up on marketing practices of hedge funds” are unfortunate and misleading since the OSC’s review was actually conducted not on hedge funds per se, but on “portfolio managers of non-prospectus qualified investment funds…that catered to large institutional investors and…a variety of clients, including private clients.” The subsequent recommendations suggests that many of these were traditional institutional managers and wealth manager who managed traditional private client accounts. (The OSC provided its “suggestions” only and did not actually “tighten” up any practices.) It appears as if one major Canadian newspaper may have even back-peddled a little on the hedge fund finger-pointing. It’s online story on November 9th was apparently originally titled “Hedge fund marketing gets failing grade” (click here for screen shot of Google cached image from 6:30pm GMT November 9), but was quickly broadened to “Money Managers’ marketing gets failing grade” (click here for screen shot taken at 3pm GMT November 15).
Comments »The Naked Hedge Fund13 November 2007
Still, much of the lessons learned in the course of our research applies to transparency in fund management as well. This is what the Wall Street Journal had to say about a book written upon completion of the research:
Well “nakedness” seems to be revealing itself again. The perennial issue of hedge fund transparency is streaking onto the industry’s agenda right now.
Comments »New Paper Looks at “Black Market Capital” in the Hedge Fund & Private Equity Markets13 September 2007
Obviously, investors want to invest in these funds. If they did not, regulation wouldn’t be required. So investors look for a ”back door” entrance into the hedge fund club. Often, this comes in the form of simply buying the stock of a hedge fund manager itself. It may also come in the form of other publicly-traded entities. Or, it might come in the form of a foreign market for domestic funds. An extensive new paper by Steven Davidoff of Wayne State University Law School refers to these investments as “black market capital” since they aim to side-step existing regulations. He says that black market capital is an “irrational” effect of SEC regulation since it actually causes small investors to invest in potentially “riskier and less suitable investments”. Stock of Fund Advisers Far from being victims of oppressive SEC regulations, it seems that owners of hedge fund IPO candidates may actually be the main beneficiaries of regulations preventing mass market investment in hedge funds and private equity. Says Davidoff:
Davidoff says that Blackstone’s June 2007 IPO was oversubscribed mainly by investors who wouldn’t have qualified to actually invest in any of Blackstone funds themselves.
Comments »German minister “vindicated” on hedge funds? Please…4 September 2007
We note some bitterness in this comment. But maybe that’s just us. If there’s one thing that gets us going here at AllAboutAlpha.com it’s pitchfork-carrying, torch-wielding populists who, with the tacit endorsement of some quarters of the mainstream media, blame everything on the financial “Axis of Evil” - namely: hedge funds, private equity funds and investment banks.
Comments »OECD: Locusts are good for the ecosystem26 August 2007
There was a time when “hedge fund” truly referred to a fund that hedged something. But as the years went by, “hedge fund” grew to mean any unconstrained private pool of capital. And today in some circles, “hedge fund” means basically anyone who allegedly sc**ws-over a trade union. At least, so said the June report on hedge funds from the ITUC (see related posting, read full report). While the report was essentially about the rapid growth of private equity funds and the social impact of buying and selling companies, the term “hedge fund” seemed to make an awful lot of cameos. The OECD released a report last week on basically the same topic (available here). As you might guess, it came out decidedly in favor of private equity and hedge funds on the grounds that they contributed positively to corporate governance. But this report made a careful and helpful distinction between “activist hedge funds” and all other types of hedge funds. In fact, the report was even titled: “private equity firms and activist hedge funds”.
Comments »The SEC Anti-Fraud-Rule Meeting Highlight Reel22 July 2007
(If you’re an asset manager and the mere thought of reading another story about hedge fund regulation makes your toes curl, we recommend you forward this posting to your compliance officer. We think it’s definitely worthwhile having someone at your organization check this out.) Although the rule applies equally to mutual funds, private equity funds and hedge funds (any pooled investment vehicle), the media has emphasized the hedge fund angle with statements like:
Comments »Morningstar Patents Retirement Savings16 July 2007
This patent reminds us of Research Affiliates’ recent patent on fundamental indexation (see related posting, “The Patent King of Pasadena“). Both make liberal use of the terms “machine-readable medium…” and “processor performs the steps…” to differentiate their “inventions” from generic and broadly-understood concepts. Says Ibbotson’s statement:
Comments »Dubai Opts for HF “Code of Practice” Over Full Regulation14 July 2007Special to AllAboutAlpha.com by: Timothy Laing, Unicredit
When asked about the approach taken by the proposal, the DFSA’s Ian Johnston said:
If this is what hedge fund oversight will look like in the future, then it will be difficult to argue against such proposals, voluntary or otherwise. In fact, these recommendations should fall under the heading of “common sense” first and “best practices” second. One can only wonder what the reaction would have been at the recent G8 summit if, instead of the “Locust” approach, Frau Merkel had come forward with a reasonable and level-headed proposal similar to what the DFSA has put forward.
Comments »New Congressional Hedge Fund Report Not Actually That Bad25 June 2007
As it happens, one such briefing package was delivered to eager Members of Congress two weeks ago with typically little fanfare. Its title was “Pension Funds Investing in Hedge Funds”. Word of the report seems to have spread (judging by its rising star in a Google search). And today, the report is posted for all to see by a the public interest group The Center for Democracy & Technology. (Hat tip to Hedgco.Net for the heads-up). This comes at a critical time for Congress as they search for ways to pick up the pieces of the SEC’s botched attempts to regulate the hedge fund industry. Furthermore, this report could easily represent the sum total of the hedge fund knowledge of many in Congress. So we were particularly curious to see what was inside. Here’s the summary (slightly condensed to save valuable pixels):
Comments »World’s Unions Debate: Are Hedge Funds “Locusts” or “Termites”?24 June 2007
Look, we’re obviously biased toward private equity and hedge funds. But we’re also sensitive to their impact on other stakeholders. Private equity, by its very nature, will always be a tug-of-war over economic output between the owners of capital and other stakeholders (employees, suppliers, neighbours, NGOs etc.) Given the massive and sudden growth in private equity and hedge funds, there is no doubt these issues will need to be addressed sooner rather than later. In fact, we know of various multi-lateral initiatives tackling these problems right now and we are following them closely. However, while attempting to make an important contribution to the global debate, this report makes excessive use of fallacies and half-truths that reveal a populist anger over the bigger issues of economic inequality. The resulting potpourri of socio-economic beefs does little to advance a rationale dialogue. Before cracking the cover, we took a wild guess that these guys weren’t crazy about alternative investments. And since most of you may not be crazy about unions (or reading the report’s 52 pages), we distilled a few of the more outrageous claims below. To begin with, this excerpt sums of up ITUC’s overall feelings about hedge funds and private equity:
Comments »The arms merchants of 130/3014 June 2007
Lending money is an ancient business. But what’s not so old is the business of facilitating short-sales (short-selling began in the 18th century). And the business of short-selling is about to change dramatically with the entry of what seems to be a flood of traditional managers into the 130/30 space. This will inevitably put new pressures on the prime brokerages and force them to address a common concern: fee transparency. Some have wondered if there would be enough stock to short and whether the end was nigh. Last fall Goldman Sachs hypothesized that the end wasn’t imminently nigh, but might not be far off (we were less sold on their concerns - see posting). Goldman’s numbers and those cited in the Hedgworld story are quite similar. Both say there is about $4.5 to 5 trillion of stock available to short in the world (about 10% of the world’s lendable stock and 3% of the world’s total equity supply).
Comments »What do Fiduciaries, ETFs and 12b-1 Fees Have in Common?5 June 2007
Three separate stories published today by Investment News illustrate the complex inter-relationship between the regulatory landscape and alpha-centric portfolio construction. Seemingly disparate stories about fiduciaries, ETFs, and 12b-1 fees have roots in the same underlying phenomena.
Comments »‘Merrill Rule’ Smack-Down good for alpha-centric investing23 May 2007
The rule was initially adopted by the SEC in 2005 to allow broker-dealers to offer fee-based brokerages accounts without the requisite fiduciary responsibilities faced by fee-based financial planners (although certain other requirements were mandated in the place of those fiduciary responsibilities). Naturally, trade groups like the Financial Planners Association (FPA) cried foul, arguing in their capacity as de facto “advisors”, these broker-dealers faced a conflict of interest between their role “advising” clients and their role selling securities on a commission basis.
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Industries dominated by fixed costs tend to experience a lot of price competition. You don’t have to look any further than the airline industry to find evidence of this economic axiom. In fact, price competition is often even more fierce in growth industries where price cuts are enabled by economies of scale. For example, the Model T Ford had a price tag of $850 when it was launched - blowing away most rivals priced in the $2000-$3000 range. Within a few years, the Model T MSRP was around $300 - illustrating to the world the new economics of scale.
Two recent court cases have captured the attention of hedge funds. One pits a corporate raider cum philanthropist (TCI) against the increasingly desperate management of a old-line 100,000-car railroad (CSX). The other accuses two average-Joe hedge fund managers as the ones who originally infected patient zero in the global credit pandemic (Bear Stearns’ High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund or “BSHGSCSELF” for short)
Fortune released 
Every 6 months, the European Central Bank issues a state of the union report on the financial system called the “Financial Stability Review” (
Stories of regulatory infractions are usually a great antidote for insomnia. But this one’s a hum-dinger. 
You have to give regulators an “A” for effort. We’re not totally anti-regulation here at AllAboutAlpha.com. But we do find in curious how most, if not all, attempts to regulate hedge funds seem to have eventually come to a crashing halt. 
Since The President’s Working Group (PWG) released it’s “Best Practices for Hedge Funds” Report (
Boy: You sure gotta climb a lot of steps to get to this Capitol Building here in Washington. But I wonder who that sad little scrap of paper is? 
As you are likely aware by now, the Asset Manager and Investor Committees of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets 
Phillip Goldstein is at it again. The guy who single-handedly vacated the SEC’s hedge fund regulation rule has now threatened to sue his arch nemesis if it doesn’t lift its ban on hedge fund advertising immediatley. According to 
Institutional investors seem have developed a love/hate relationship with hedge funds according to 
Skeptics often content that private equity (and hedge fund) “locusts” are holding companies for ever-shorter periods of time in an effort to extract value and high-tail it out of an investment before things go south. Some, particularly trade unions, also believe that private equity take-over targets are destined to lose jobs following an acquisition (
Official news of the SocGen fiasco broke on Thursday, January 24 (See 
It was 8 years in coming. An idea that began as a set of notes back in 1999 slowly and methodically grew over the years to eventually become a manifesto of modern risk management. According to author Richard Bookstaber, “A Demon of Our Own Design” began as a labor of love. It seems that the result represents a sort of catharsis - therapy for a hedge fund insider who has been a first-responder at the scene of some of history’s most calamitous financial crashes. 
Yesterday, we told you about a study released last month showing that when it comes to photo finishes, hedge funds are more likely to produce “marginally positive results” rather than ones that are either flat or marginally negative. Researchers concluded that some hedge fund managers may be goosing returns by just enough to turn a slightly negative result into a slightly positive result - a small change that could make a world of difference to them and to their fund raising activities.
News of the latest regulatory scrutiny for hedge funds began circulating earlier this week and yesterday made the pages of InstitutionalInvestor.com. The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), Canada’s de facto securities regulator, released a 
In a previous life, Alpha Male was a director at a business strategy think tank that researched, amongst other things, transparency. Only this “transparency” was the sort demanded by social activists and other stakeholders of global corporations, not the oft-cited position transparency we all love (or hate) in the hedge fund business. 
With the best interests of the investing public in mind, financial regulators have long sought to prevent retail investment in hedge funds and private equity. The Investment Company Act in the United States, for example, expressly forbids small investors from buying into such funds. And recent SEC overtures about dramatically raising the wealth threshold shows this desire is alive and well.
For two organizations with very similar (and highly creative) logos, the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (
As many readers will know, the US Securities and Exchange Commission passed a 
Well, maybe not retirement per se. But Ibbotson (now under the Morningstar umbrella) recently convinced examiners at the US Patent Office that adjusting a retirement portfolio based on the amount of time until a worker retires was patent-worthy. According to the US Patent Office website, 
The 
Former fans of TV’s “The West Wing” may recognize the “
In a follow-up from Friday’s posting about the potential global financial calamity that might be caused by the seemingly benign pension fund community, we stumbled across this report (also released last week) by the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). The report is called “
Managing a hedge fund requires a veritable arsenal of trading tools. Among them are the trusty duo of leverage and short-selling. The arms merchants in these pitched financial battles are the prime brokerages - the bank divisions that cater to the needs of nearly all hedge funds. Apparently, it’s good work if you can find it. 
A few days ago, we wrote 
As advisors and brokers amongst you are well aware, the D.C. Court of Appeals recently hosted the regulatory equivalent of pro wrestling’s “Smack-Down”. The result - a defeat for the SEC - was hailed by some as a “