Browsing: active management

By Hossein Kazemi, PhD, CFA, CAIA Association, FDP Institute, and Isenberg School of Management Introduction While Keynes vs. Markowitz is not as thrilling as Ali vs. Frazier, it has important implications for investors when selecting funds and investment managers when constructing portfolios.  In this “fight,” we have in one cornerRead More

A new look “under the hood” at active credit managers comes from a paper written by two executives at AQR Capital Management. Diogo Palhares and Scott A. Richardson find that long/short fixed-income managers have a high exposure to the credit risk premium. But high-yield-focused long-only managers provide less exposure toRead More

Two different strands of scholarly research into hedge fund performance produce markedly different conclusions. There is the returns-based approach, which finds that the average hedge fund manager does better than the market portfolio, net of fees. But there is also a holdings-based approach, which looks at the performance of theRead More

LPL Financial’s 2018 Forum Conference for investors took place in Boston this week, Sunday through Tuesday. This is an annual event that brings together thousands of advisors and program managers to discuss industry issues and new products. LPL is an independent broker-dealer headquartered in Boston, with offices in Fort Mill,Read More

Natixis’ Center for Investor Insight surveyed 500 institutional investors in the fall of 2017 about long-term objectives, short-term opportunities, and the concomitant pressures. In a new paper, Natixis discusses the Center’s take-a-ways from this survey Geopolitical events are the most worrisome prospect on the minds of the decision makers atRead More

Natixis Global Asset Management is out with its annual survey of institutional investors and their views about alternative investors. The survey included institutions around the world and of many distinct classes: corporate and public pension funds, insurance funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments/foundations, managing amongst them $15.5 trillion. The break-down ofRead More

McKinsey & Co. has posted a new report assessing the state and the future of the North American asset management industry, encompassing both active and passive managers and looking at five mega-trends. Skipping to the chase, the trends are these: The end of an anomalous eta of “exceptional investment returns.”Read More

By Baird’s Asset Manager Research Exploring the costs and benefits of two alternative investment approaches Synopsis Proponents of active and passive investment management styles have made exhaustive and valid arguments for and against both approaches. Each has its merits and inherent drawbacks, and this paper will not endorse one styleRead More

Guest columnist Diane Harrison looks at what advisors think of hedge funds.Read More

Pimco is expanding its active ETF offerings significantly. By serendipity, The Cerulli Edge contains some fascinating data on the growth of the ETF industry. both active and passive. Read More

It is good that the stuffy old healthcare organizational folks stuck with fixed income investments!, because those investments did better than any other asset class as a component of their FY2011 returns. Fixed income returned 5.4 percent. The more exciting field of international equities was the big loser, with a -10.9 percent return.Read More

Hedge funds as a class have performed quite well since 1994. As one might expect, distinct hedge fund strategies yield distinct results. Long/short equity strategies (or “equity hedge” strategies as KPMG calls them) have done best. Generally speaking, hedge funds willing to make directional bets have outperformed those that stick to relative-value plays.Read More

Although distressed“fire sales” are fewer in some periods than in others, it is true all around the business cycle that mutual fund managers face constraints related to the need “to cater to investors by investing in the hot stocks and by having a strong positive correlation between their flow and the value of the assets in which they invest,” as a new academic paper explains. Hedge funds, with their more professional investors, their deliberate opacity, and their constraints upon withdrawal, aren’t subject to those constraints. Thus, when mutual funds are constrained to follow a trend, hedge funds are in a position to be contrarians.Read More

AllAboutAlpha catches up with Lauren Templeton, great niece of Sir John Templeton to discuss value investing and its alpha potential.Read More

Britain’s Private Finance Initiative has continued through the administrations since Blair’s, and indeed has inspired emulation across the Channel. At the same time, it has stirred up a good deal of criticism, and in November 2011 the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a plan to reform the PFI. One of the reform proposals is to seek broader participation by pension funds, or in pale bureaucratic jargon, “access a wider range of financing sources.”Read More

Three lawyers with Covington & Burlington write about the new intensified scrutiny to which regulators are subjecting algorihtmic and high frequency trading. They place it in the context of an old dispute over what constitutes market manipulation. According to the broadest view, if a trader's 'sole intent' in making even a quite ordinary buy or sell order is to move the price, then the resulting trade is market manipulation.Read More

The question in 2012 is not whether hedge funds (and other alternative investment vehicles) can attract pension funds, but how they should go about it. Alternatives managers will benefit most from the heightened interest of pension funds if they address the continuing concerns of their pension fund colleagues. For example, pension fund managers are well aware that investment in exotic and illiquid products is something hedge funds do, and they know that these products can help make a quick exit impossible. Read More

One crucial takeaway from SEI's latest is that "the quality of operations is a major consideration in institutions' screening and evaluation of hedge funds." Eighty percent of respondents agreed with the observation that "operational strength is a hallmark of an institutional-quality hedge fund." One quarter of those say they agree "strongly." Only three percent disagree.Read More

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

A new survey points to new trends in the third party marketing space, most notably the re-emergence of third-party marketers.Read More