To what can administering to a separately managed account be best compared? Arm-wrestling an octopus, some posit. Herding cats, others offer. Fact is, just about any advisor offering managed accounts can testify to the complexity of the related...
In his influential book, Pioneering Portfolio Management, Yale University's chief investment officer, David Swenson, makes the case for illiquidity. Swenson notes that on Oct. 19, 1987, the day the stock market dropped by more than 22 percent, a...
With the securities firms forever searching for edgy products, it should come as little surprise that exchange-traded-fund (ETF) wrap accounts are growing in popularity. ETF wraps, which are less expensive than mutual funds, are seen by many as a...
Three years ago Barton Biggs, the curmudgeonly chief global strategist of Morgan Stanley, said a hedge funds had gripped the United States and Europe and that a was inflating. Biggs allowed that he didn't know when the hedge fund bubble would...
Three years ago, at the height of the equities run-up, investors had little reason to be interested in hedge funds. The intervening years have brought with them some important lessons about diversification, and this has made alternative...
ARBITRAGE STRATEGIES Convertible Arbitrage: Managers invest in companies' convertible securities. Typically, they will be long the convertible bond and short the common stock of the same company. Positions are designed to generate profits from the...
If a recent SEC staff report is any indication, it may not be long before hedge fund investment professionals are regulated as heavily as their brethren at brokerage firms. The Sept. 2003 report, entitled Implications of the Growth of Hedge Funds...
Say a neighbor pays you to shovel the snow in front of his house. But the neighbor on the other side of your house gives you 10 times as much for the same service, plus a bonus if the sidewalk doesn't have a speck of ice on it. Wouldn't you be...
Ordinarily, serious investors aim to steer clear of financial instruments that are sold on late-night infomercials, but tax liens on real estate might well be the exception to this rule. In fact, the very things that makes such investments seem...
Are hedge funds the next bubble to burst? If you read general interest business magazines, you might think so. In October, for example, Forbes repeated its assertion, made a year earlier in a cover story, that hedge funds charge outrageous fees...