No matter how hard they try, there is one thing mega money managers can't build overnight: six years of experience. So in hot areas like 130/30, this invariably leads to one thing: acquisitions.

Morningstar's Steve Deutsch has a bird's-eye view of the burgeoning 1X0/X0 field. Today, he shares this perspective, concluding that money managers are stealing a page from the telecom playbook.

What does Led Zeppelin have to say about long/short funds? Thankfully, you don't have to play Stairway to Heaven backwards to find out.

Like contestants on the venerable game show, The Price is Right, institutional investors seem to be taking wild guesses at the right price for 130/30 funds.

S&P announced yesterday that they would offer a 130/30 "index" based on the firm's STARS stock-ranking methodology. But what exactly is it an index of?

After we wrote a posting last spring about 130/30 in the world of fixed income, the strategy seemed to go underground. But it's poking its head back above the ground now.

Fundamental managers may well catch up to quants in the 130/30 game. But quant managers will always have one advantage: a bigger pantry.

Think you know the stock lending market? 130/30 fees? Whether quants are better at 130/30? How about whether portable alpha and 130/30 are cousins? If so, you may be the only one.

Another appeal has gone out for anyone with a three-year 130/30 track record. But it appears that responses must continue to be a little thin.

In this guest posting, First Quadrant's Jia Ye says a short-extension strategy can certainly improve a manager's information ratio. But she warns that 1X0/X0 may not always be a good thing.

According to a survey released today, 1X0/X0 has nearly doubled in six months - not a bad haul considering that institutional investors tend not to make a lot of investment decisions over the summer.

Two articles this week aim to provide a "balanced" view of 1X0/X0 funds. One because its analysis is dispassionate and one because it tries its darndest to create controversy.

A reader writes us today about the risks and challenges of 130/30 - in both English and in Chinese.

Bruce Jacobs and Kenneth Levy, two of the finance world's most prolific authors on the topic of short-selling and long-short portfolios, have released a new article on 1X0/X0 (while Jacobs also stars in a recent webcast on the topic).

We buy the intuitive and academic rationale for 130/30 strategies. But sometimes we wonder if "130/30" is becoming like ".com" - a name attached to anything in order to generate excitement.

A U.S. municipal employees' pension plan has issued a request for proposals to the 130/30 community. The only problem is, barely anyone in the community actually qualifies to bid.

A paper released over the summer by four men who are often considered originators of 130/30 says that the most desirable level of shorting (of "X" in 1X0/X0) actually fluctuates over time according to market factors.

Since 130/30 funds are so new, there is precious little historical data to analyse. But now one manager has come up with a way to back-test 130/30 strategies to see how they would have performed over the past 13 years.

Today we release the results of our recent poll of attitudes toward the much-talked-about 130/30 investment strategy.

With 130/30 funds moving on to the retail investor's agenda, we had a quick look at how well they are currently analysed and marketed. Our conclusion: we've got a long way to go.

Visitors to our Events Section may have noticed that many of the world’s leading conferences on portable alpha, 130/30 and hedge fund replication are organized by Terrapinn or one of its subsidiaries.  Terrapinn’s events in this area have featured industry leaders such as Harry Kat, Bill Fung, David Hsieh, Rob Arnott, Thomas Schneeweis, Nassim Taleb, Laurence Seigel, Paul [...]

Canadian fund manager Brompton Group announced last week that UBS will sub-advise a closed-end 130/30 offering targeted at retail investors.

According to a recent report from Citigroup, several factors determine the "optimality" of 130/30. In the second of two exclusive postings on the report, its author discusses these variables.

In late June, Citigroup released a comprehensive 36 page quantitative analysis of 1X0/X0 strategies.  We found that the report went beyond similar studies and reached a number of useful conclusions about the optimal X in 1X0/X0.  The paper’s lead author, London-based Citigroup MD Manolis Liodakis has written this summary exclusively for AllAboutAlpha.com.  We have divided it [...]

A recent 1X0/X0 fund launch describes the strategy as a "high conviction" strategy. But are 1X0/X0 and "high conviction" actually synonymous?

Short-selling is all the rage. But how much of it is a straight market call and how much of it is the result of a secular shift to portable alpha, 130/30, and other alpha-centric strategies?

A conference covering portable alpha, 130/30, LDI and related strategies has recently released its proceedings to the public. While they contain no new research, they show what's currently on the alpha-centric radar screen.

Long/short managers often say they produce alpha on the long and short sides of their portfolios. But in a world where good shorts are getting hard to find, whither "double alpha"?

The Association of Investment Management Sales Executives (AIMSE) met in Scottsdale, Arizona earlier this month. Naturally, 1X0/X0 was on the agenda and several presentations are worthy of a second look.

Russell recently announced that it was adding more 1X0/X0 to one of its retail mutual funds. To an existing 120/20 mandate, it is now allowing a second sub-advisor to go 130/30. All aboard!

The wildly successful 130/30 investing strategy can be described as a long-only fund with a hedge fund component. So why didn’t it sell that well in it’s earlier incarnation as a hedge fund with a long-only component?

It's easy to get caught up in abstract ideas such as alpha and beta. But as this article illustrates, the mechanics of 130/30 raises some interesting questions.

Location: New York Dates: November 7-9, 2007 Organized By: Terrapinn In a great example of real-time market response, organizers of “Portable Alpha USA” have recently added “130/30″ to the mix. While these two topics might appear to be slightly different species, we argue that they are part of the same genus: alpha-centrus investingae. Portable Alpha advocates would have [...]

Pensions & Investments reports today that institutional money managers now manage, you guessed it, $30 billion in 130/30 “or similar equity strategies” ($29.9 billion to be precise).

How did such an awkward term arise from nowhere so quickly to capture our collective imagination?

Consultant Casey Quirk and database provider eVestment Alliance published their “2007 Consultant Search Forecast” last week - and it's a clear reaffirmation of our mission at AllAboutAlpha.com.

The classic portable alpha model usually involves long and short investments in equities. But Prudential Financial is now talking about “the burden of the long-only constraint” in fixed income portfolios.

“High conviction”. The very term conjures up images of Martha Stewart, Bernie Ebbers or some hedge fund blow up. But the term is also being used to describe an emerging alpha-centric approach to investing.  In this case, however, “high conviction” refers to the manager’s belief in their stock picks, not to the likelihood of them [...]

It’s curious to see a resurgence of this concern coming not from the usual suspects (hedge fund managers threatening to close to new investors), but from outside the industry: in the 130/30 arena.