Posts Tagged ‘ hedge fund ’

Hedge Fund Weather Report for 2012: Mostly Cloudy

Jan 2nd, 2012 | Filed under: Alpha Strategies, Hedge Fund Industry Trends, Hedge Fund Strategies, Today's Post

The Mathema report is full of cautions, and indeed adopts a quite generally gloomy tone. The markets, it tells us, don’t lend any credence to the political fixes that have been offered for the eurozone and especially for its peripheral players. If the fixes did have credibility, then the PIIGS’ 10-year government benchmark yields would have been falling significantly of late vis-à-vis the 10 year German Bund yield. But there has been no such fall.

Asian Fund Distribution: Beyond UCITS

Nov 21st, 2011 | Filed under: Alpha Strategies, Hedge Fund Industry Trends, Hedge Fund Strategies, Institutional Investing, Today's Post

The world is a fairly small pond in which ripples anywhere soon shake the surface everywhere. Such an observation, like the word “globalization,” has become a cliché, but the truth behind them both becomes quite obvious in the course of a new “Viewpoint” paper by Ernst & Young that examines fund distribution strategies in the [...]

Commodities: Not That 1970s Show

Oct 27th, 2011 | Filed under: Alpha Strategies, CTA, Commodities, Today's Post

Commodities have been the big story of the past decade – almost a repeat of the inflation-burdened 1970s. If hems reflect stock market sentiment, we should be seeing an outbreak of bell-bottom trousers and platform shoes. Certainly, a new cohort of investors, institutional and retail alike, see price rises in the elements core inflation strips out – namely food and energy – as a secular shift. Still, appearances can be deceiving. A recent study argues a long-only bet on commodities is likely to result in a return that is statistically 0: not the 1970s at all.

Predictable Black Swans: Hedge Fund Formerly Known as B of A Exercises $75 Trillion Put to US Treasury, Hopes to Protect Equity Splinter

Oct 25th, 2011 | Filed under: Alpha Strategies, Derivatives, Today's Post

Well, maybe not $75 Trillion.  And it doesn’t call itself a hedge fund.  To be really, really fair, Bank of America couldn’t have gotten all its derivatives positions wrong, even though it’s a bank.  However, as we shall demonstrate, the phrase “equity sliver” is way too optimistic.  Understand this about a derivative hedge:  it’s a [...]

Passivity, Activity, and Alpha in Currency Management

Oct 2nd, 2011 | Filed under: Alpha Strategies, Currencies, Hedge Fund Operations and Risk Management, Hedge Fund Strategies, Performance, Analytics & Metrics, Today's Post

By Christopher Faille Passive and active investments are often contrasted as if the distinction is self-evident. It isn’t. Even for an unambitious long-only equity indexed fund, trades have to be executed in order to maintain the desired balance, and these trades can be executed either well or poorly, in ways that help or hurt the investor. [...]

Who said hedge funds don’t like chaos?

Feb 18th, 2010 | Filed under: Performance, Analytics & Metrics, Today's Post

A report from Moody's shows that hedge funds seem to hate volatility. But is this always true?

New data shows that thanks to alternative investments, endowments did relatively well in 2009

Feb 4th, 2010 | Filed under: Institutional Investing, Today's Post

Sure, US university endowments took a dive last year. But a closer look reveals that, on the whole, alternative investments were a help, not a hindrance.