Browsing: Liquid Alts

ETFs are one of the routes by which once alternative and elite-access-only strategies have become democratized or gone retail. As a result of this trend, we have synthetic ETFs, smart beta ETFs, leveraged ETFs, and inverse ETFs. A recent study study provides some reassurance about concerns that have motivated kickbackRead More

By Aaron Filbeck, CAIA, CFA, CIPM, Associate Director, Content Development at CAIA Association During CAIA Association’s most recent Virtual Chapter event, Keith and I (virtually) sat down with Chris Tidmore, CFA, CPA at The Vanguard Group to discuss Vanguard’s recent whitepaper, “The Wrapper Matters: Comparing Liquid Alternatives to Hedge Funds”Read More

By Beth Anne Byrne and Kara O’Halloran, FS Investments Warren Buffett’s famous quote reads “You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out”. The tide is most certainly out now, and many portfolios have been exposed. The historic bull market has ended, and with it theRead More

A recent paper by two legal scholars warns of the absence of transparency, of the opacity, that investors may face in ESG funds and ESG exchange-traded funds. “Buyer Beware: Variation and Opacity in ESG ad ESG Index Funds,” is the work of Dana Brackman Reiser and Anne M. Tucker, whoRead More

A recent paper by a scholar at Tilburg University and a market participant at Robeco outlines the difficulties that the hedge fund industry has faced over the last decade. These problems arose, at least in part, from the democratization of alternative investing. There are three important challenges to the hedgeRead More

By Nicolas Rabener of FactorResearch @FactorResearch INTRODUCTION Investors seeking exposure to global equities with a low carbon footprint could consider the iShares MSCI ACWI Low Carbon ETF (CRBN) or SPDR MSCI ACWI Low Carbon ETF (LOWC). CRBN has $500 million of assets under management, compared with $90 million for LOWC.Read More

By Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM – Associate Director, Content Development at CAIA Association Whether it’s that some retail versions of alternative investments have not lived up to their private counterparts, or that retail investors may be last in the buffet line for private placements, there are several arguments againstRead More

Negative interest rate policy—that is, central bank arrangements that seek to inspire spending by punishing savings, not merely in real but in nominal terms—have spread in recent years among the developed economies, and are now in use in Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, and the Eurozone. Denmark got the ball rolling inRead More

By Nicolas Rabener of FactorResearch (@FactorResearch) INTRODUCTION The mafia and the hedge fund industry share some characteristics. Both are powerful, non-transparent, and create little value for society. Naturally the mafia is a criminal organization while the only “criminal” element of hedge funds are the high fees they are charging forRead More

A new paper by Sean Markowicz, a strategist at Schroders, looks into the possibility that fund flows into the assets generically called smart beta are having detrimental consequences for the financial system. It also sheds some light on investors’ bad timing regarding ETFs. The assets at issue are, according toRead More

FTSE Russell has posted its sixth annual survey of global asset owners’ views of smart beta. Smart beta is a strategy that uses indexes, but that is not traditionally cap-weighted, that is, one where the construction of the index itself incorporates the investment strategy, capturing investment factors or market inefficiencies.Read More

By Nicolas Rabener of FactorResearch (@FactorResearch) INTRODUCTION Investing is challenging as it is complex and complicated, which requires continuous learning and updating of mental frameworks. Conflicts and contradictions are found everywhere. For example, data from the mutual fund industry shows that most funds fail to outperform their benchmarks, but investors inRead More

Scotiabank recently released what it calls a “high-level guide for mutual fund companies interested in launching liquid alternative products.” The creation of this guide was stimulated by a reform of the regulations of the Canadian Securities Administrators, aimed at making liquid alternatives more readily available to investors in Canada. OnRead More

State Street Global Advisers has put out a “Complete Guide to Smart Beta.” A preface by Lynn S. Blake explains that the focus of the paper is not on equity products but on “exciting new developments in the fixed income world.” Within that space, multi-factor strategies will proliferate going forward.Read More

The auditing giant KPMG says in a recent report on merger and acquisition activity in the alternative asset management world that there was a dip in activity in this space in 2015, that there was a rebound “to more normalized levels” in 2016, and that the momentum off of thatRead More

For four years now, FTSE Russell has surveyed global institutions, asking about their interest in smart beta indexes and about their allocations to investable products based on same. The 2017 survey results are in. The new survey finds (as did the earlier ones) that risk reduction, return enhancement, and improvedRead More

Beachhead Capital Management has published a white paper on what it calls the “second generation of liquid alternatives.” To begin at the beginning, “liquid alternatives” are investment products, available to retail investors, for example through mutual funds or ETFs, which are designed to provide the diversification and absolute-return benefits typicallyRead More

A recent Columbia Business School research paper looks into the transaction costs associated with smart beta strategies in order to estimate the capacity of each strategy. The three authors of the report are all affiliated with asset manager BlackRock Inc. They are: Ronald Ratcliffe, Paolo Miranda, and Andrew Ang. RatcliffeRead More

The market for liquid alternatives continues to grow and adapt. On St. Valentine’s Day of this year, ABR Dynamic Funds announced that it was launching its first Irish-domiciled UCITS V fund. Maybe it should have waited until St. Patrick’s Day? At any rate, the fund “seeks U.S. participation in aRead More

A new report from State Street Corporation and the Alternative Investment Management Association says that nearly half of the market participants surveyed believe that decreased market liquidity is a secular change, not a cyclical one: that is, that it is a climate that is here to stay, not a rainRead More

A new paper from Neuberger Berman, an employee owned private investment firm that’s been part of the New York scene since 1939, makes the case that long/short equity strategies are “worth consideration as part of an investor’s equity allocation and the overall investment mix.” The paper is written by JulianaRead More

Steven A. Keen of Perkins Coie has posted an insightful discussion of section 18 of the Investment Company Act of 1940, and of the pending proposed regulation under that mandate, Rule 18f-4, on one of that firm’s blogs, the Derivatives & Repo Report. Both that proposal and Keen’s observations areRead More

By Andrew Beer New products are sold on a story.  For alternative multi-manager mutual funds – most of which have launched since 2012 – the pitch goes something like this:  we can find top tier hedge fund managers to run various alternative investment strategies – equity long/short, relative value, macro,Read More

A global survey by PwC and the Alternative Investment Management Association looks at the expansion of the hedge fund industry and the evolution of its distribution model. The most eye-catching statistic from the survey us that 44% of fund managers responding said that they will launch a new fund byRead 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

Two authors at EDHEC remind us that 15% of the assets in any ETF or ETF-like products for European investors were in smart-beta indexed products as of August 2014, and that this amount is growing. They discuss the extent to which investors are pleased with their results. Read More

Managers who offer funds that provide shorter time frames to investment exits, greater liquidity through a hedge fund structure, and employ the event-driven skill set that identifies and manages an investment portfolio yielding private equity-like returns are finding increased interest from an investment community seeking returns married with reasonable liquidity. Read More

It appears likely that the new index, the Eurekahedge 50, as well as the daily tracker index that has been built around it, will have aspirational significance. It is designed to set a bar that will be very difficult for other alpha seekers to clear, yet easy for replicators to follow. Read More

John Shearman, CAIA, guest columnist explores the basics of liquid alts.Read More

The hedge fund universe has become a much more complicated place since 2008. The old-school hedge funds offering only quarterly redemptions with at least one month notice are no longer the only option for those seeking alternatives plays. And those who are seeking such plays may be somewhat confused by the proliferation of possibilities. Read More

Guest columnist Andrew Smith, CAIA, traces the history of Business Development Companies.Read More

Guest columnist Andrew Smith, CAIA, traces the rise and growth of liquid alternatives.Read More