Browsing: Performance, Analytics & Metrics

By Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM We have not been shy in our assessment of the current state of retirement. As we know, defined benefit plans face a tough road ahead as lofty actuarial assumptions have barely budged and regular distributions are hardly being backfilled with contributions. But what aboutRead More

By Hossein Kazemi, The CAIA Association & The Isenberg School of Management In recent weeks, hundreds of research reports and many more blogs and commentaries have discussed the current valuation of the US stock market.  With the economy in a recession and corporate profits and GDP down by double digits,Read More

By Karl Rogers, ACE Capital Investments Abstract: The sovereign bond market has traditionally been a widely used tool for portfolio construction given its dual characteristics of returning a real yield with a negative correlation to equity markets – providing both a real return expectancy and portfolio protection. Given the zero-lower-boundRead More

By Masao Matsuda, CAIA, FRM, Founder, Crossgates Investment and Risk Management One would think hedge funds can weather market gyrations better than long-only equity investments as hedge funds have greater flexibility in determining the levels of market exposure.  However, while some individual hedge funds may have been successful in adverse marketRead More

By Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM, Associate Director, Content Development at CAIA Association Central Issue of the Paper If you’re a social media junkie, you have probably seen “#goals” in your timeline. In most cases, the hashtag is referring to an attractive couple or an aesthetically pleasing plate of food.Read More

By Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM & Hossein Kazemi, PhD, CFA, CAIA Association & CISDM This is a summary of the editor’s letter originally published in the Volume 8, Issue 4 of the Alternative Investment Analyst Review, a journal published by CAIA Association. The Problem with Studies Many studies onRead More

The Sharpe ratio has long served as a simple but important item in the due diligence tool kit. Formulated by William F. Sharpe in 1966 and first called the “reward to variability” ratio, the number arises from an investment’s rate of return minus the risk-free rate divided by the standardRead More

By standard definition, “ambiguity aversion” is the preference for known risks over unknown risks, the known unknowns over the unknown unknowns. A recent paper discusses the portfolio-level consequences of this aversion. The paper, written by Valery Polkovnichenko and Hui (Grace) Wang, explains that for an ambiguity-neutral investor, “adding active portfolio withRead 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

Risk-on sentiment returned in January, with good news on trade talks and with the Federal Reserve in the United States putting some distance between itself and its 2018 hard-money stance (the Fed started saying in January that it would be “patient” about selling off-balance sheet assets). Globally, hedge funds grewRead More

By Amit Soni, Portfolio Manager, Strategic Asset Allocation, New York Life Investments Lofty valuations in traditional assets have encouraged investors to explore alternatives. Unfortunately, the lack of a holistic investment framework to incorporate alternatives poses a challenge. Traditional risk-return based approaches, alone, over-allocate to alternatives–a result of underestimation of risksRead More

A new paper by Claus Huber, of Rodex Risk Advisers, looks at machine learning for risk analysis, working especially from the “self-organizing maps” associated with Finnish Professor Teuvo Kohonen. A SOM is a low-dimensional representation of input space (thinking of it as two dimensional makes the “map” analogy intuitive, andRead More

By Tom Keck, Partner & Head of Research; Lisa Larsson, Vice President, Research Researchers at StepStone Group, a global private markets firm, recently released a white paper that puts the illiquidity of private equity into perspective. A fund’s life they reckon is too coarse a measure; the picture comes into focusRead More

Christina Atanasova and Gilles Chemla have posted a discussion of pension plans,where holdings show a tilt toward private equity and real estate investments. Atanasova is associate professor of finance, Beedie School of Business,  Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, Canada.  Chemia is professor of financial at Imperial College Business School, London,Read More

Deustche Bank recently released its Alternative Investment Survey, the 16th annual.  This year the questionnaires received replies from 436 global hedge fund investors, with assets under management of $2.1 trillion, who shared their insights, sentiments, and allocation plans.  Glenn Bunn, co-head of Prime Finance at DB, said in a statementRead More

A new paper in the Journal of Accounting and Finance discusses hurdle rates and high watermarks, and how they affect, or at least correlate with, performance. A hurdle rate is a minimum contractually specified rate of return that a hedge fund must achieve in order to collect performance fees. ARead More

Northill Capital, a London-based asset manager, has released a report defending active asset management from the common charge that it cannot, after costs, beat the passive managers. That is an old and familiar subject for debate. What cannot be debated, because it is a simple matter of definition and arithmetic,Read More

By John Czapla, Parag Patel and Shane Newell, Valuation Research Corporation As the demand for transparency rises for private equity and hedge funds, the spotlight is increasingly focusing on valuation practices. There are an important number of reasons why the valuation process has become important, and they are essential forRead More

A slim majority of hedge fund managers are in the red year to date, through April, according to the latest report from Eurekahedge. Specifically, 51.4% of managers have negative YTD performance. Over the same period in 2015, the analogous number was only 21.2%. That is a good indication of whatRead More

The latest report from Eurekahedge tells us that hedge funds worldwide are down year-to-date through February, -1.27 percent. Dividing the industry by geographic mandates, Latin America is the only region to post YTD gains, +1.9% due to a rally in oil and commodities. Table 1, adapted from the report below,Read More

The latest Eurekahedge report says that regional mandates for the month of December 2015 produced quite mixed results. Asia ex-Japan managers yielded the best results, gains of 1.45%. Their Japanese counterparts produced 0.27%. In annual terms, Asia ex-Japan funds delivered 8.23% in 2015. Such funds saw an annual AUM growthRead More

Faille takes a quick trip around the world with the assistance of Eurekahedge's numbers and graphs showing performance in November 2015 and year to date.Read More

In recent months, even the anticipation of Fed Reserve tightening has been able to send markets into a tizzy. Now the actual tightening is at last upon us. Both Natixis and Reuters surveys speak to the way the buy-side and sell-side see this. Read More

DB Prime's researchers have highlighted the multi-year outflows from EM to DM. EM equity inflows in particular reached a peak in early 2011. Since then EM equities have seen an outflow which has benefitted primarily Europe and Japan within the developed world. Read More

Paul Chadwick, chairman of AIMA Australia, says that the hedge fund industry in Australia is at an "inflection point." Faille reflects on that ubiquitous expression, and then turns to Australia's new Investment Manager Regime. Read More

As regular readers of this blog may recall, I have found much to admire in the writings of Nassim Nicholas Taleb. So I am happy that he had decided to put some distance between himself and a recent claim that Universa made $1 billion when bad news from China shook the world's markets in late August. Read More

Guest columnist Charles Skorina looks at the potential for 2016 endowment returns and finds them to be somewhat lacking... Could alternatives ride to the rescue?Read More

Both private and community foundations depend heavily on U.S. equities. Indeed, domestic equities remained the bright spot while other strategies underperformed in 2014. A new report from a collaboration of the Council on Foundations and Commonfund provides food for thought about the reversal in foundation returns in that year. TheRead More

Guest columnist Andre Boreas takes a look at the alternative investment universe year-to-date 2015 by the numbers.Read More

Andrew Beer continues his discussion on slashing hedge fund fees without burning yourself or your clients.Read More

European mandated hedge funds, benefitting from improved expectations regarding that region, are up 5.54% year to date, says Eurekahedge. Wait: improved expectations? Yes, notwithstanding continued Greek drama. Read More

Factor models will evolve as researchers untangle what value is to be attributed to what factor. Model selection, then, has to remain flexible to keep pace with such research, and must of course remain useful for the investment decision makers. Read More

Guest columnist Andrew Beer takes on hedge fund fees. In part one of the series he looks at the investor aggregation model.Read More

According to Eurekahedge the hedge fund industry globally returned $54.1 billion in performance gains in the first quarter 2015. This is the greatest first-quarter gain since before the global financial crisis. Read More

Eurekahedge's latest report gives a number of timelines for grappling with changes in the hedge fund world: since 2007; since January 2013; YTD January 2015. In any frame, you don't have to be a meteorologist....Read More

Andrew Beer looks at what happens when talented hedge fund managers try and perform within the constraints of the mutual fund structure. Read More

Reuters is now reporting that major investors seek the opportunity to convert their voting shares of Twenty-First Century Fox into non-voting shares, because the voting shares are trading at a discount. Faille takes Reuters' anonymous sources at their words for the purposes of discussion. He doesn't think these investors will get their convertibility. Read More

A useful benchmark or a dangerous prop? Guest columnist Andrew Beer looks at the hidden dangers in indices.Read More

Guest columnist Don Steinbrugge examines what might happen to hedge funds if there's a 2008 "Groundhog Day" in the markets.Read More

A regime switching model may treat a high-volatility environment as one “regime,” and a low-vol environment as its successor regime. The idea, as it applies to risk management, then, is simply to be ready in either setting for the switch to the other. This is both playing defense and playing offense. It is both managing risk and pursuing alpha. Read More

A new white paper produced jointly by FundCalcs and Global Perspectives looks at the growing complexity of calculating performance fees.Read More

Only two hedge fund strategies performed in the positive numbers in October, the rest were all in the red. Managed futures did best, according to the Eurekahedge numbers, benefitting from their short positions on oil prices. Read More

In what will be its last regular monthly report on such matters, GFIA tells us that a sharp correction hit markets in Asia ex Japan in September, and tells us of some of the funds that defied the outgoing tide. Read More

Move over! It's crowded in here. What happens when hedge funds crowd a trade? Guest columnist Andrew Beer looks at hedge fund performance and the crowded trade.Read More

India accounts for much of the positive showing of Asia ex-Japan in the hedge fund world YTD. That positive showing, in turn, may be attracting asset flow. Read More

Guest columnist Peter Urbani looks at emerging managers and why they may be re-emerging and bringing alpha with them.Read More

Christopher Faille speaks to Matt Porzio, the VP of Strategy and Product Marketing at Intralinks, about the data behind Intralinks' DFI. Read More

Banco Espirito Santo, and its CEO Salgado, had emerged from an earlier round of crisis (way back in 2012) with a roseate smell. Their latest smell ... not so good. Read More

The latest report from Eurekahedge mentions that though instability is "brewing again in the Middle East," things have settled down a bit in Eastern Europe. This report was written prior to the shoot down of a Malaysian jet over the Ukraine. Read More

The stakes, for mathematics, finance, and the overlap of the two, are pretty high. So my ears pricked up when I heard of a sweeping challenge to Bayesianism. Read More