>One of the ways of looking at the health of a hedge fund business is in staffing levels. Like many other businesses in finance hedge funds cut back on headcount in late 2008 and into 2009, and the cutbacks in London based hedge funds continued into 2010 (see this article for data on last year). […] Read more »
Risk Managers are the Social Workers of Asset Management?
Recent research has shown that in the UK 86% of youth workers/social workers time is spent in completing forms for reporting, and in attending meetings about clients and how the services are run. Only 14% of time is spent with clients. This skewed sense of priorities came to mind when I read the 2011 Risk […] Read more »
The Dangers of Mixing the Functions in a Hedge Fund Management Company
In an in-depth due diligence questionnaire of a hedge fund manager there is often a question about the outside business interests of the principals. For an organisation with a broad team of decision makers managing investments this is less of a concern. To the extent that there is a single presiding talent who sets the […] Read more »
UK Focused Hedge Funds to Benefit from More QE and More Devaluation
>This short opinion piece from SVM’s Colin McLean was so brief and on-the-money I thought I should share it. The third paragraph in particular is worth absorbing. “The summer stockmarket sell-off caught most investors by surprise. Expectations changed sharply as a good company reporting season in July gave way to a vacuum in US and […] Read more »
Chart of the Day – Extremely High Correlation of Stocks – Implications for Hedge Funds
I’m doing some work on risk measurement/management at a hedge fund management company. The investment strategy of the hedge fund is long/short equity. Most of the work revolves around measurements at the portfolio level, and the aim of measuring and controlling risk is to produce steady returns for investors. This is only possible on a […] Read more »
Hedge Fund Returns for 2011
A poll was conducted on this website recently asking this question: “In 2010 the year was rescued in performance terms by the huge injection of QE2. So the outcome was a reasonable year. Is there a Second Act to rescue this year? What do you think hedge fund returns will be for the whole of […] Read more »
Out of the Box – Graphic of the Day – Why Hedge Funds Will Continue to Grow
By Simon Kerr One of the advantages of looking at the activities of institutional investors is that their behaviour follows decision-making which stands for years at a time. The Investment Committee of a pension plan changes the strategic asset allocation say every 5 or more years. There may be a decision made to have […] Read more »
A State Pension Plan Hedge Fund Mandate – It Takes a While
American investing institutions are the dominant source of capital for the hedge fund industry. It is important to understand how and why they act. The Wyoming Retirement System just announced who would be managing its assets for its first hedge fund allocations. The winners of the mandates are not surprising, but here the focus is […] Read more »
Mark Anson’s Top Ten Hedge Fund Quotes
Mark Anson is unusual in having held the top job in a major institutional investor on both sides of the Atlantic. He was Chief Executive Officer of Hermes Pensions Management Ltd., where he was also the Chief Executive Officer of the British Telecom Pension Scheme, the largest pension fund in the United Kingdom. Prior to […] Read more »
Syz’s Altin Zigs When Others Zag
ALTIN AG (LSE:AIA) (SWX:ALTN), the Swiss alternative investment company listed on the London and Swiss stock exchanges, discloses quarterly its entire hedge fund portfolio holdings as part of its policy of full transparency to investors initiated in 2009. Looking at the strategy allocation shifts of the fund of funds managed by Banque Syz makes an […] Read more »