The right question is not what were they thinking, but what were they feeling? Get organized about detailing what feelings are being acted out and you’ve landed on the missing link in risk prediction.

By John Brynjolfsson A CPI critic recently suggested that Ben Bernanke thought CPI homeowner equivalent rent is a “made up” figure. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over the years I’ve been impressed with the rigor of CPI, unimpressed with its critics, and unable to find a better measure of the cost of living. Outside the [...]

Peter Urbani looks at Cornish Fisher and modified VaR as a function of skewness.

If every fund is number one, then no one is number one. Irina Zeltser examines performance rankings in private equity.

Guest columnist Charles Hage looks at hedge fund risk and discusses the long and the short of it.

Fear has gripped investors since the crises of 2008 and 2009 and the pain keeps coming back with a resounding smack every time a news story breaks. However, investors are starting to move back into the markets and if emerging managers aren't in the game now, they aren't going to get to play.

By John Brynjolfsson, CIO Armored Wolf As markets reel in the wake of the failed German Bund auction that occurred earlier this week, our beliefs regarding financial security are rightly shaken down to their very foundation, and below! After all, 10-Year government bonds, at least as introduced to students in business schools over the past 70 years, [...]

The sixty largest US college endowments (those with over $1 billion in assets) once again have chart-topping performance. After suffering drawdowns and liquidity issues in 2008 and2009, these large endowments earned average returns of 12.2% in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010, the latest period available, which beat the returns of smaller college endowments [...]

To say the MF Global situation is a mess may be the understatement of the century. How do we make sure that a futures investor regains confidence in the industry, and chooses to go ahead with that investment? The hollow emails by FCM presidents and owners to their clients saying they care is simply not enough; actual solutions and fixes to the problems which allowed the MF Global mess to happen need to be enacted.

In keeping with our mission to provide a marketplace of ideas, today's post presents two views of a paper that deals with the banking rules, which directly affect the core of the financial services industry and its future stability.

By John Brynjolfsson In October the markets voted: the EU finance ministers are ‘all in’ in their commitment to finding a solution to the Union’s troubles. Here, from a perch at Armored Wolf, however, we see a quagmire, and looking forward we will remain focused on the still inherent and deeply seated issues plaguing the [...]

The latest version of a yearly analysis tells the same old story about performance, now backed up by fifteen years of data. And the potential rewards of investing with smaller funds go beyond what you see in the database statistics.

Jeremy King of Knight Pacific discusses his contrarian views on investing in Asia.

Alpha isn't always where you'd expect it, especially in the crowded private equity field.

What's it all about, this alpha? And for that matter, where is it? Dr. Bob Swarup tackles the real meanings of alpha and beta.

Ron Resnick, a co-founder of CounselWorks, argues that the current debt crisis debate is a red herring which obscures the harsh reality that the federal government is already effectively insolvent. I have remained blissfully undisturbed by the twists and turns of the political  battles being waged in Washington, D.C. over the debt ceiling, federal government spending, [...]

A perfectly "hedged" fund is one which has no downside risk. Its payoff relative to the market or some other benchmark is the same as that of the fund plus a put option that provides protection against the downside. In the real world...

Hedge fund indexes have been around for as long as there have been hedge funds to index. As the industry evolves, so too the way it is measured must change. The Hedge Fund Barometer intends to change the way we measure hedge fund performance.

Irina Zeltser attended the US Super Returns conference, held recently in Boston, where the future of the general partner business model was up for debate.

Some new research shows that it may be possible to mathematically determine a bubble before it forms, let alone pops.

By Steve Deutsch, MBA, CFA, CAIA, AllAboutAlpha Editorial Board Who would have thought investment ideas would come from the 1970s television series Green Acres? However, it looks as though Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor may have been well ahead of their time when they left New York’s Park Avenue for greener pastures.

Think your basket of thousands of stocks is the most diversified portfolio possible? Maybe not...

Special to AllAboutAlpha.com by: Paul Cantor, CFA, portfolio manager and Diane Harrison, Managing Director, Hercules Trading Fund, LLC Investors looking for opportunities in the hedge fund market first need to consider an overall strategy approach. The typical ‘Big Three’ are: 1) Directional, 2) Market-Neutral, and 3) Event-Driven. Directional strategies seek to anticipate market movements, market-neutral approaches [...]

Times are tough for VCs. The National Venture Capital Association recently found out exactly how tough. (Hint: "Fund raising skills" are now a must-have for CEOs.)

A recent Mercer report proposes a way to integrate climate change into financial decision-making. Could this finally move climate change from the social agenda to the financial agenda?

A recent scan of the financial reports of 150 major pension funds reveals the world's most popular alternative investment managers. Here's an award not even Lindsay Lohan could win.

Sure it's hard to start a hedge fund these days. But for some that obviously doesn't matter.

After last week's mega-deal, private equity firm Carlyle Group solidified its position as the world's most formidable barbarian at the gates of the world's private companies. But does heft equal returns?

The hedge fund industry has an occasional obsession with exotic risk metrics (VaR, Conditional VaR, Omega Ratio, higher moments, etc.).  These make a lot of sense if you have a few Ph.D.’s on staff (read: you’re a large institutional investor).  But what if you need to explain the non-market-tracking nature of a hedge fund to [...]

By: Mikhail Iliev, head writer of Who’s In My Fund? Back in January, AAA asked whether the significant increase in proposed Securities and Exchange Commission examinations heralds a new era for hedge fund oversight. The question looks to be answered soon and most likely in the affirmative – at least in the context of insider trading. Headlines of [...]

Wondering how much of the pie really goes to the manager? Read on.

Regardless of its source, negative roll yield is an uphill battle for those trying to make money in commodity markets. But is it surmountable? The short answer appears to be "yes."

A recent academic study confirms the prevailing wisdom that cheap debt provided private equity funds with a sugar rush that is now beginning to wear off.

Morningstar's Steve Deutsch puts a microscope over some of the most "pro-alternative" public pension plans in the United States. What he finds may help hedge fund and private equity managers sleep a little sounder at night.

For many institutional investors, investing in the environment is now all about alpha, not social change.

Alpha doesn't always have to come from security selection - as today's guest contributor points out.

If it ain't broke, do you try to fix it anyway?

By: Andrew Saunders, Director, EFX Prime Services, Member, AllAboutAlpha.com Editorial Board To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the death of fund of funds (FoFs) may have been greatly exaggerated. Recent surveys seem to show a future that – to borrow Ben Bernanke’s phrase now – “unusually uncertain” (see posts here, here, here and here). However, [...]

Keith McCullough's journey from Thunder Bay, Ontario to mid-town Manhattan is both an homage to the "everyman" and a biting critique of the hedge fund industry.

The effect of the Lehman bankruptcy still reverberates around the prime brokerage industry in the form of business model innovation.

Traditionally, hedge fund databases have focused on performance-related metrics, relegating qualitative factors to the back-burner. However, Morningstar has recently created a metric that captures both quantitative and qualitative information. Morningstar's Steve Deutsch takes it for a test drive.

Do hedge funds like chaos? Some do and some don't according to our guest author today.

For generations people have wondered "what defines 'art'?". Now we have the answer: 'art beta'...

The venture capital community says it's a "critical" service that supports job growth and therefore should not succumb to new taxes on many alternative investments. But will Congress buy it?

Special to AllAboutAlpha.com by: Steve Deutsch, AllAboutAlpha.com Editorial Board At the end of March I reviewed the CFA Institute’s “Insights into the Global Financial Crisis” on these pages.  Now, in my continuing search of a good explanation to the Subprime Credit Crisis of 2008-9 and the role of alternative investments in the economic calamity that followed, [...]

Here's another reason to count domestic and geopolitics as betas.

As alternative investors know, money does grow on trees after all. The trick is: how to harvest it.

An asset management firm that is ubiquitous in the fixed income and pension fund world, BlackRock is a world-leading alternative asset management franchise.

At the very least, NASCAR and Formula One share two things in common with the alternative asset management industry...

Note from the editor: To avoid the ash cloud in Europe, I have been trying to re-route from Hong Kong to Sao Paulo via Johannesburg. Alas, no such luck. But in lieu of my hoped-for African stop-over, AllAboutAlpha.com Editorial Board member Ranjan Bhaduri and his colleague Bob Doyle tell me what I'll be missing. (Frankfurt, I am now told, isn't such a half-ash place after all.)