(from the publisher) While the interest in portable alpha has grown exponentially, few investors have a true appreciation for the risks and operational complexities associated with this investment application. By first mapping out the key components and evolution of portable alpha, this book aims to give investors a solid foundation in this discipline. From there, it ties in investment theory and asset allocation, then addresses the relevance and common misuse of the alpha and beta terms, inherent leverage, derivatives-based "beta," and global sources of (portable) alpha and risk, including equity, bonds, and hedge fund strategies. Implementation is covered in a dedicated chapter, as is risk management and the increasingly interrelated topic of LDI. Overall, this reliable resource will allow investors, consultants, practitioners, and academics to gain a better understanding of the potential benefits, applications, costs, and risks associated with portable alpha implementation.

Title: CAIA® Notes, Level I
Publisher: Institutional Investor Exam Prep
Published: Updated Twice Per Year

(From publisher) Prepare for the CAIA Level I Exam with our self-study handbooks and software.  Our hard-copy handbooks summarize all the Level I learning objectives, from reviewing essential concepts in finance, investment, and statistics, to differentiating between different AI trading strategies and performance measurements. Also available – CAIA® Prep – easy-to-use software generates multiple-choice questions that are designed to cover major concepts in a clear and concise manner. You can also create content-specific tests for drilling individual topics, track your improvement on successive tests, and learn from the software why a particular answer is correct for a given question.

Title: CAIA® Notes, Level II
Publisher: Institutional Investor Exam Prep
Published: Updated Twice Per Year

(From publisher) Pass the CAIA Level II Exam with our self-study handbooks and software.  Our hard-copy booklets summarize all the Level II learning objectives, from risk management to portfolio optimization. Also available – CAIA® Prep – easy-to-use software generates multiple-choice questions that are designed to cover major concepts in a clear and concise manner. You can also create content-specific tests for drilling individual topics, track your improvement on successive tests, and learn from the software why a particular answer is correct for a given question.

Title: The Euromoney Portable Alpha Handbook 2008
Publisher: EUROMONEY INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR PLC
Published: January 2008

The phenomenon of portable alpha continues to go from strength to strength and is a hugely debated investment strategy in today's financial world. This is why it has never been so important to keep up with the very latest portable alpha innovations, trends and debates that are changing on an ever-frequent basis. The Euromoney Portable Alpha Handbook will fulfil this mission on an annual basis, providing a round-up of the year's most thought-provoking issues and looking towards the future of this exciting concept. Growing on the success of last year's first edition, this edition continues to offer incisive perspectives from a carefully selected editorial board of excellence, each presenting their own take on portable alpha, including articles on an alternative route for active portfolio management, the challenges of portable alpha implementation, plus many more exclusive contributions.

To read exclusive editorial by Christopher Holt, Founder and Editor of AllAboutAlpha.com, please click on the link >>Christopher Holt, The geometry of portable alpha and 130/30

Title: Active Alpha - A Portfolio Approach to Selecting and Managing Alternative Investments
Author: Alan Dorsey
Published: August 2007

(From publisher) Enhance overall investment returns by using alternative investments as the centerpiece of a portfolio. Alternative investments–such as hedge funds, private equity, and real estate–are growing in both popularity and importance, with more than $1 trillion invested in them. Filled with cutting-edge material on the latest trends in the world of portfolio management, Active Alpha shows readers how to analyze the factors associated with Alpha across all alternative investments. The book then explores how today’s investment professional can build a balanced portfolio with the right mix of alternative and traditional assets and low risk exposure.

Title: Capital Ideas Evolving
Author: Peter Bernstein
Published: May 2007

(From publisher) Follow-up to Bernstein’s landmark work, Capital Ideas (1992), which described the breakthrough financial theories of a small group of academics, including Paul Samuelson, Harry Markowitz, Bill Sharpe, Jack Treynor, Eugene Fama, Robert C. Merton, Fischer Black, and Myron Scholes. Their pioneering insights laid the intellectual groundwork for many of the innovations, new products, and strategies that are revolutionizing today’s world of finance. Based on personal interviews with leading academics and pioneering investment practitioners, Capital Ideas Evolving demonstrates how these financial theories now shape the underlying structure of portfolio management and market behavior, sparking important innovations such as portable alpha and fresh insights into the risk/return trade-off.

Title:  A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation
Author:  Richard Bookstaber
Published:  March 2007

(From Publisher) Bookstaber gives readers a front row seat to the management decisions made by some of the most powerful financial figures in the world that led to catastrophe, and describes the impact of his own activities on markets and market crashes. Much of the innovation of the last 30 years has wreaked havoc on the markets and cost trillions of dollars. A Demon of Our Own Design tells the story of man’s attempt to manage market risk and what it has wrought. In the process of showing what we have done, Bookstaber shines a light on what the future holds for a world where capital and power have moved from Wall Street institutions to elite and highly leveraged hedge funds.

Title: Handbook of Hedge Funds
Author: Francois-Serge L'habitant
Published: February 2007

(From publisher) Intended as a comprehensive reference for investors and fund and portfolio managers, Handbook of Hedge Funds combines new material with updated information from Francois-Serge L’habitant’s two other successful hedge fund books. This book features up-to-date regulatory and historical information, new case studies and trade examples, detailed analyses of investment strategies, discussions of hedge fund indices and databases, and tips on portfolio construction.

Title: Asymmetric Returns
Author: Alexander Ineichen
Published: October 2006

(From Publisher) In Asymmetric Returns, financial expert Alexander Ineichen elevates the critical discussion about alpha versus beta and absolute returns versus relative returns. He argues that controlling downside volatility is a key element in asset management if sustainable positive compounding of capital and financial survival are major objectives. Achieving sustainable positive absolute returns are the result of taking and managing risk wisely, that is, an active risk management process where risk is defined in absolute terms and changes in the market place are accounted for. The result of an active risk management process-when successful-is an asymmetric return profile, that is, more and higher returns on the upside and fewer and lower returns on the downside. Ineichen claims that achieving Asymmetric Returns is the future of active asset management.

Title: Investors and Markets
Author: William Sharpe
Published: October 2006

(From pubisher) William Sharpe shows that investment professionals cannot make good portfolio choices unless they understand the determinants of asset prices. But until now asset-price analysis has largely been inaccessible to everyone except PhDs in financial economics. In this book, Sharpe changes that by setting out his state-of-the-art approach to asset pricing in a nonmathematical form that will be comprehensible to a broad range of investment professionals, including investment advisors, money managers, and financial analysts. Bridging the gap between the best financial theory and investment practice, Investors and Markets will help investment professionals make better portfolio choices by being smarter about asset prices.

Title: Handbook of Alternative Assets
Author: Mark Anson
Published: September 2006 (2nd edition)

(From publisher) Since the first edition of the Handbook of Alternative Assets was published, significant events—from the popping of the technology bubble and massive accounting scandals to recessions and bear markets—have shifted the financial landscape. These changes have provided author Mark J. P. Anson with an excellent opportunity to examine alternative assets during a different part of the economic cycle than previously observed in the first edition.

Fully revised and updated to reflect today's financial realities, the Handbook of Alternative Assets, Second Edition covers the five major classes of alternative assets—hedge funds, commodity and managed futures, private equity, credit derivatives, and corporate governance—and outlines the strategies you can use to efficiently incorporate these assets into any portfolio. Throughout the book, new chapters have been added, different data sources accessed, and new conclusions reached.

Title: Evaluating Hedge Fund Performance
Author: Vinh Tran, (Forward by Thomas Schneeweis)
Published: February 2006

(From pubisher) Tran gives readers the information they need to construct an efficient hedge fund portfolio based on their own level of knowledge. From evaluating hedge funds to picking the winners, Dr. Tran covers some of the most important issues related to this flexible investment vehicle. Evaluating Hedge Fund Performance takes the standard hedge fund book to a new level by detailing how to manage the risk of hedge funds and offering the best methods to evaluate and monitor hedge funds. With strategy based on interviews and data from experts in the field, this book is a must-read for any investor or manager who is investing in hedge funds.

Title: Uncoventional Success
Author: David Swensen
Published: August 2005

(From publisher) Swensen offers incontrovertible evidence that the for-profit mutual-fund industry consistently fails the average investor. From excessive management fees to the frequent "churning" of portfolios, the relentless pursuit of profits by mutual-fund management companies harms individual clients. Perhaps most destructive of all are the hidden schemes that limit investor choice and reduce returns, including "pay-to-play" product-placement fees, stale-price trading scams, soft-dollar kickbacks, and 12b-1 distribution charges.

Swensen's solution? A contrarian investment alternative that promotes well-diversified, equity-oriented, "market-mimicking" portfolios that reward investors who exhibit the courage to stay the course. Swensen suggests implementing his nonconformist proposal with investor-friendly, not-for-profit investment companies such as Vanguard and TIAA-CREF. By avoiding actively managed funds and employing client-oriented mutual-fund managers, investors create the preconditions for investment success.

Title: Intelligent Hedge Fund Investing
Author: Barry Schachter
Published: 2004

(From publisher) Presents cutting-edge research on hedge funds with broad coverage of investing, risk management and portfolio allocation and in-depth analysis on a variety of topics including VaR estimation, illiquidity and dynamic investment strategies.  Explores important differences between approaches to hedge funds and standard investment choices.  Gain a practical insight into the proper analytical tools for evaluating hedge fund investments in order to reach better decisions both in managing the risk of these investments and in allocating the risk among alternatives.

Title: Capital Ideas
Author: Peter Bernstein
First Published: 1992

(From publisher) ...traces the origins of modern Wall Street, from the pioneering work of early scholars and the development of new theories in risk, valuation, and investment returns, to the actual implementation of these theories in the real world of investment management. Bernstein brings to life a variety of brilliant academics who have contributed to modern investment theory over the years: Louis Bachelier, Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe, Fischer Black, Myron Scholes, Robert Merton, Franco Modigliani, and Merton Miller. Filled with in-depth insights and timeless advice, Capital Ideas reveals how the unique contributions of these talented individuals profoundly changed the practice of investment management as we know it today.