Alternatives

Future’s Hedge Funds

/ Kiwi Investor / 1 Comment

A really interesting article by the Chief Investment Officer: A New Generation of Hedge Funds Can Provide Stability, Australia’s sovereign wealth fund CIO is betting hedge funds can help reduce risk.

The article covered a number of themes from my earlier Blog Post Perspective of the Hedge Fund Industry. 

The hedge fund industry, and the “hedge fund”, have changed dramatically over the last few years.  This is captured in the recently published AIMA paper (Alternative Investment Management Association), Perspectives, Industry leaders on the future of the Hedge Fund Industry.  The AIMA paper is covered in the Post above.

The following Quotations from the Chief Investment Office article by Raphael Arndt, CIO of Australia’s A$166 billion sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund, are consistent with the AIMA Paper:

  • “Hedge funds have an important portfolio role to play in generating returns that are uncorrelated to equity markets,” Arndt said last week in a speech before the Insurance Investment Forum in Torquay, Australia.
  • “For the Future Fund, hedge funds have a very specific purpose in our portfolio.  This is to reduce risk—and in particular to provide returns during market environments involving prolonged periods of losses in equity markets.”

 

From Kiwi Investor’s perspective a well designed and implemented Hedge Fund solution is particularly attractive for an insurance company.

 

Arndt, continues:

  • “I recognize that hedge funds have historically had a public relations problem, being associated with high fees, a lack of transparency, and perceptions of poor ethics and customer focus,” said Arndt.
  • But Arndt said this perception of hedge funds is a dated stereotype that he refers to as “hedge funds 1.0,” which has given way to what he calls “hedge funds 2.0”—a newly evolved generation of hedge funds.

 

This sentiment very much comes out in the AIMA paper As Arndt emphasised, many hedge funds run institutional-quality investment process.  If they don’t, they don’t receive institutional money.  This not only relates to the investment management process, it includes issues such as management of counter party risk, operational risk management, regulatory risk management, and transparency of portfolio risk exposures.

Lastly, after outlining the type of hedge fund solution the Future Fund runs, Arndt comments:

  • “I encourage industry participants to consider such a program in their portfolio to protect against the risks associated with a repeat of a GFC type event in equity markets,” said Arndt. “The fees paid, while unquestionably high, are worth paying for skilled managers who collectively can add significant value to the portfolio overall.
  • “It’s time to re-examine what hedge funds offer,” he added. “The industry has evolved and improved, and features a new breed of managers that are different from their predecessors.”

 

These comments are also consistent with points made in my earlier post on Investment Fees and Investing like an Endowment – Part 2 and Disaggregation of Investment Returns.

 

In effect, the Future Fund uses Hedge Funds to provide return diversification, they use Hedge Funds so they can invest into riskier assets like equities and illiquid asset such as infrastructure, property, and private equity.

We all know a robust portfolio is broadly diversified across different risks and returns.

Combined the Future Fund has a more robust portfolio.

 

It has worked well for them, the article states: “As of the end of March, the Future Fund reported a return of 8.5% per year over the last 10 years, compared to a target benchmark return of 6.7% per year during that same time period.”

This is a very good result, successfully managing into their stated investment objectives.

 

Happy investing.

 

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Global Investment Ideas from New Zealand. Building more Robust Investment Portfolios.

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Perspectives of the Hedge Fund Industry

/ Kiwi Investor / 3 Comments

The hedge fund industry, and the “hedge fund”, have changed dramatically over the last few years.

This is capture in the recently published AIMA paper (Alternative Investment Management Association), Perspectives – Industry Leaders on the Future of the Hedge Fund Industry

From the report: “Most people today look to hedge funds for diversification, i.e., an alternate return stream, with low beta and correlation to traditional investments. In the past, the driver of hedge fund interest was high expected returns and growth of capital.”

Hedge fund’s largest clients are Pension Funds, University Endowments, and Sovereign Wealth Funds.

Access to hedge fund strategies is becoming increasingly available to retail investors.  Hedge Funds, and hedge fund strategies, are no longer the exclusive domain of High Net Wealth Worth individuals.

 

Summary of the Report’s Executive Summary

  1. Paradigm shift. The industry is experiencing significant transformation as investors seek new investment solutions to more cheaply access different return streams. This has witnessed an innovation of investment solutions that fit between the traditional hedge fund and the traditional actively managed listed market funds.  These new investment solutions are providing the benefits of increased portfolio diversification for lower fees and increased transparency relative to the traditional hedge fund.  These cheaper return streams are the factor betas and alternative hedge fund betas. There has been a disaggregation of investment returns as a result of recent investment solution innovation.
  1. Hedge Funds can still produce alpha (risk adjusted excess returns) but it is getting harder due to increased competition and the greater ease of access to financial data and computing power.
  1. Therefore, an increasing employment of artificial intelligence and advanced cutting-edge quantitative techniques will likely grow across the hedge fund industry.
  1. The integration of Responsible Investing will likely rise across the hedge fund industry.
  1. The hedged fund firm is likely to change from its current traditional model, employing outside of the traditional business school graduate, employing a greater diversity of talent, flatten organisational structures, and encourage more collaborative environments.
  1. Hedge Fund firms will likely look to partner more with investors and co-invest.
  1. This will see a different focus on distribution and ownership models.

 

Points One and Two are of the most relevant to the focus of Kiwiinvestorblog.

The changing dynamics of the hedge fund industry has implications for the wider funds management industry e.g. downward pressure on fees, the blurring of the lines between traditional fund managers and hedge fund managers investment solutions, and the increased weight on traditional active equity managers to deliver genuine alpha – the closest index fund is on the endangered extinction list!

Importantly, the change taking place is making it easier, cheaper, and more transparent to implement truly diversified and robust multi-asset portfolios.  This is evident in the thoughts expressed in the quotes provided below and throughout the Report.

Section One of the Report formed the basis of an earlier blog on the Disaggregation of Investment Returns between market beta, factor and hedge fund beta, and alpha (linked aboved).

Pages 37 – 43 of the Report has a good discussion on whether hedged funds can still generate alpha (risk adjusted excess returns).

Understanding these sources of returns will help in building truly diversified portfolios.  It will also make the quotes more meaningful.  A greater appreciation of where the industry is moving will also be gained.

 

The following quotes from the Report help bring this all together.

Happy investing

 

Key quotes from within the Report:

“The past years have brought significant changes to the hedge fund industry. What was once a boutique industry serving high-net-worth individuals now serves some of the world’s largest investors. The products offered by hedge fund firms are changing to meet the needs of this wider and more diverse investor universe. The alpha-beta returns dichotomy of yesteryear is being replaced with a new range of investment solutions tailored to the needs of a wider range of investors.”

 

“A majority of investable assets in the total hedge fund pot will go to some form of risk premium investment strategy or a low-to-average correlation type of investment product, because investors have become increasingly more technical and have caught on to the fact that some investment strategies can be replicated for lower fees. Going forward, I expect more than half of the hedge fund investable universe will comprise of the top ten largest investment strategies being commoditised into more low-cost investment products—the so-called liquid alternatives. The remainder of the universe will comprise of high-end niche investment strategies that are capacity constrained, and are able to deliver true alpha.”

 

“Changing investor expectations are forcing hedge fund firms to rethink the investment solutions that they offer. The pace of technological change and the rise of artificial intelligence is leading some to question whether the hedge fund proposition will even exist in a few years. Responsible investment, meanwhile, is becoming more of a priority for hedge fund firms, as they gradually overcome their reluctance to constrain themselves. All of these changes are in turn forcing hedge fund firms to re-evaluate their own inner workings, from how they service investors through to how they build a business that outlasts its founders.”

 

Please see my Disclosure Statement