Blog

As some of the biggest names in hedge fund management gathered in New York last week, an analysis of the tips they offered at last year’s Ira Sohn Investment conference showed that on the whole, they earned a return three points less than traditional index funds.

The Sohn Investment conference, a pediatric cancer research fundraising event, brings together leading fund managers who share insights and investment strategies with wealthy investors. This year, 17 managers took turns on the stage at Lincoln Center to share their views on everything from promising sectors to global economic policy. Read the rest of this entry »

With too many hedge funds doing only marginally better than the best of the mutual funds, and all but the riskiest bonds yielding not much more than a CD, alternative asset managers are beginning to eye the enormous opportunities in the consumer credit market.

There is nothing new about funds participating in distressed securities or trading in the credit markets, especially for the high-yield funds. An analysis by Man Investment from April 2008, nearly the beginning of the Great Recession, offered insights into the opportunities presented by the cascade of credit problems, observing that “distressed markets are inefficient and hedge funds can often buy securities at deep discounts, benefiting from forced selling by other market participants.” Read the rest of this entry »

Private equity firm LeapFrog Investments sees insurance as an opportunity to put some money where it will further a social good while earning a reasonable return.

Tahira Dosani, LeapFrog’s director of global engagement and strategic projects, says the firm has been making relatively small, equity investments in the insurance industry in Africa and Asia. The average size is about $12 million. Read the rest of this entry »

Green Key was featured in a recent report on the state of New York’s financial sector hiring.

While Hedge Fund Alert declared, ”It’s becoming increasingly difficult for traders to find work in the hedge fund industry,” Green Key partner Brian Blake was more optimistic about financial sector hiring. Brian, who heads our Permanent Recruiting group, was quoted in the article discussing the increase we are seeing in operations and compliance positions.

In addition, Brian and his recruiting team are finding an increased demand for professionals in alternative asset management, as well as across the board in financial services.  As Brian reported in a blog post last year, “There still remains a shortage of quality accountants in the marketplace today… CPAs remain in short supply in all industries.”

South Florida is fast becoming the newest haven for hedge funds, and Palm Beach County is its center.

With the Cayman Islands threatening to open up thousands of financial companies and hedge funds to public scrutiny, and other Caribbean shelters weighing tax increases, Florida is looking better and better. Funds long headquartered in New York, Boston and elsewhere in the Northeast have been flocking to Florida where there’s n either snow nor state income tax. Read the rest of this entry »

New York’s venture capital community, second only to California, is retreating from early stage funding just at a time when many of the seed-funded startups will be looking for A-round investment. Crain’s New York Business calls it a “collision course”; seed money is still flowing into startups, but when they’re ready to move to A-funding, they’re finding it difficult to interest anyone.

“A seed-stage company funded 12 to 18 months ago, with traction but not breakaway growth, will have a more difficult time getting series-A funding,” said Brian Hirsch, co-founder of Tribeca Venture Partners. “There’s still a fairly short list of venture funds in the local market that will fund traditional series A, and there are hundreds of seed-funded companies. Something has to give.” Read the rest of this entry »

As alternative investment strategies become significant and substantial parts of institutional investors’ portfolios, the risk management practices that they have traditionally employed are no longer adequate, writes Tyler Kim, CIO of MaplesFS. He says that with “fixed income yields at historic lows and equity markets exhibiting lackluster performance” greater risk is required to achieve returns similar to those in the past. While these alternative investment strategies offer good returns, institutional investors in particular are exposed to risks unlike those they’ve experienced before. In his article, he outlines how to develop “an adaptive approach to risk management that enhances portfolio performance, and more importantly helps institutional investors to embrace alternative investments with greater confidence.” FINalternatives

In the wake of the devastation wrought to the East Coast, and especially to  New York City, public safety departments, transit agencies, utility companies, hospitals, and other critical service providers are evaluating how well they responded to the crisis.

So, too, are investment managers. What they are finding, says Phil Niles, a director with Butterfield Fulcrum, a Canadian fund administrator, is that in many cases their disaster planning was “notably insufficient,” or, worse, they “did not have true disaster recovery plans.” Read the rest of this entry »

Do managers of smaller funds do a better job? Cambridge Associates, an investment consultancy advising on institutional assets worth about $3 trillion, thinks so. Speaking at the recent FINforums Annual Hedge Fund Summit in New York, the firm’s Director Of Diversifying Investments, Samuel E. “Q” Belk, said “Smaller managers are better managers.” His fellow panelist, Marne Gorman of Cliffwater, a $41 billion consultancy, agreed. Her firm, she said, while attracted to the same ‘sweet spot’ in terms of manager returns, “doesn’t want to be too big a percentage of a manager’s assets.” FINalternatives

The world’s most successful hedge fund manager has a few words of advice for the average investor: balance portfolios for risk. “I think that the first thing is you should have a strategic asset allocation mix that assumes that you don’t know what the future is going to hold.,” says Ray Dalio, who runs Bridgewater Associates. Don’t try to beat the market, thinking you can time things so cleverly you come out ahead. You won’t Dalio warns. Those investors, he says, “make a mistake in terms of dollars invested and with a bias with what’s done well in the past and they don’t realize that risk.  They should balance it in terms of risk.” Business Insider