Alternative Investments… Fund of Hedge Funds, Manager Selection, and Due Diligence 22 Oct 2013November 14, 2013 One of the main reasons that more and more institutional investors, particularly endowments and foundations, include hedge funds in their portfolios is the expected diversification benefit, given the existing array…
Alternative Investments… An Event-Driven Strategy: Merger Arbitrage 22 Oct 2013October 23, 2013 Event-driven strategy seeks to invest in opportunities associated with corporate transactions such as consolidations, acquisitions, recapitalizations, bankruptcies, and liquidations. Merger arbitrage event-driven managers employ strategies that can capitalize on valuation…
Alternative Investments… A Relative Value Strategy: Convertible Arbitrage 22 Oct 2013 Hedge funds deploying relative value strategies seek to take advantage of “discrepancies” in price between securities or the overall market. Within the relative value category, there are sub-strategies, and convertible…
Alternative Investments… A Global Macro Strategy: Managed Futures 22 Oct 2013October 28, 2013 Hedge funds utilizing a global macro strategy take positions in equity, fixed income, or currency markets in anticipation of global macroeconomic events to generate risk-adjusted returns. Global macro fund…
Alternative Investments… Hedge Fund Landscape 22 Oct 2013November 26, 2013 The first hedge fund emerged in 1949 when sociologist Alfred Winslow Jones and his four friends formed an investment partnership. The first reference to a hedge fund appeared in a…
Alternative Investments… Impact Investing – The Next Generation of Venture Capital 20 Oct 2013October 20, 2013 In the 1990s, Jed Emerson advocated the concept of Blended Value for funds, firms, social ventures, and foundations to invest with social and environmental impact, rather than to maximize financial…
Alternative Investments… Private Equity Portfolio Management 20 Oct 2013October 20, 2013 Portfolio Management is a process of making investment decisions about asset mix, policy, and buy/sell disciplines in order to meet individual and institutional investors’ specified financial objectives, risk tolerance, investment…
Alternative Investments… Private Equity Fund of Funds 19 Oct 2013October 19, 2013 PE fund of funds have been around for nearly as long as the buyout industry. This type of investing became mainstream during the mid to late 1990s, as institutional investors…
Alternative Investments… Venture Capital and Buyout 18 Oct 2013 The Yale Endowment’s investment success has been largely driven by the categories that are designed for sophisticated investors, such as PE. Ten years ending June 30, 2013, the endowment fund’s…
Alternative Investments… Private Equity Landscape – Updated through October 2013 17 Oct 2013November 26, 2013 The growing interest in private equity investments has arisen among the institutional investors in the U.S., particularly endowments and foundations. The most significant reason of which include: compared to public…
Alternative Investments… Endowment Spending and Purchasing Power Preservation (IV): Real Estate 15 Oct 2013October 28, 2013 Potential Benefits of Real Estate Investments Similar to the return patterns of other real assets, real estate returns also have low correlations with traditional investment vehicles, which adds a diversification…
Alternative Investments… Endowment Spending and Purchasing Power Preservation (II): Timberland 14 Oct 2013October 28, 2013 Investments in natural resources, such as oil and gas, farmland, timberland, and metals and mining provide protection against unanticipated inflation, high and visible cash flow, and opportunities to exploit inefficiencies.…
Alternative Investments… Endowment Spending and Purchasing Power Preservation (I): Commodities 13 Oct 2013October 14, 2013 Endowment Spending Policy One of the most difficult challenges that any investment committee member of endowments and foundations face is choosing a spending policy that will best balance two competing…
Asset Allocation… Theory Versus Practice: Rethink Your Portfolio Optimizers 9 Oct 2013October 10, 2013 Portfolio optimization is a mathematical process of assigning the proportions of various asset classes or investment styles to be held in a portfolio, in a way as to construct the…
Asset Allocation… Balancing Risk and Reward: Asset Allocation 8 Oct 2013October 16, 2013 The Importance Asset Allocation Many portfolio managers believe that asset allocation is one of the most important decisions that investors make: From a portfolio design standpoint, portfolio theory asserts that…
Alternative Investments… From Modern Portfolio Theory to Pioneering Portfolio Management: The Endowment Model 6 Oct 2013October 15, 2013 Implications of Modern Portfolio Theory Traditional and widely used institutional policy portfolios commonly consisted of a majority of U.S. equities and a reciprocal proportion of U.S. bonds, e.g., 60% stock/40%…
Portfolio Management… Where Would You Place Your Trust – Wall Street, Main Street, or University Street? 2 Oct 2013October 2, 2013 In my experience in the investment business, I have found three basic choices. You can trust Wall Street (financial media, investment banks, insurance companies, brokerage houses, mutual fund families), Main…