Behavioral Finance… A Couple Lessons Learned from Recent Experience 22 Jan 2015January 22, 2015 Not only did the investing herd have the outlook for rates wrong, but it was uniformly inquiring about the wrong thing. Asset prices are often set to allow for the…
Alternative Investments… Liquid Long/Short Mutual Funds 29 Oct 2014 Investors who want the return opportunities of equities but are concerned about a fully valued market should consider strategies that are designed to asymmetrically capture up and down market movements,…
Alternative Investments… An Intriguing Alternative Investment: Farmland 4 Aug 2014 Every day the total population of planet earth increases by over 200,000 people. There are 1,402 million hectares of arable land, 138 million hectares of perennial croplands and 3,433 million…
Equity… Choosing From Beta Strategies: Bettering Your Investments with a Smarter Exposure 17 May 2014May 19, 2014 Institutional investors have employed alternative weighting and factor-driven strategies for decades. In recent years, a growing variety of alternative beta strategies have come to market, as investment managers are pursuing…
Alternative Investments… Private Equity Market Landscape – First Quarter 2014 4 May 2014May 19, 2014 The year of 2013 has been the most successful year for private equity firms since 2008, with 873 funds with an aggregate of $454 billion. In 2013, the private equity-backed…
Healthcare Fund… Venture Capital in Life Sciences (III): Monoclonal Antibodies in the Treatment of Ankylosing Spondylitis 16 Apr 2014April 19, 2014 The application of monoclonal antibody drugs is a relatively new innovation. Approximately 54% of monoclonal antibody drugs available are applied in various types of cancer, although clinical trials are also…
Healthcare Fund… Venture Capital in Life Sciences (II): Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine 7 Apr 2014April 7, 2014 Pharmacogenomics focuses on understanding the response rates and side effects of a treatment at the individual level. It analyzes the influence of genetic variation on drug response in patients by…
Healthcare Fund… Biomedicine: Healthcare Venture Capital’s Investment of 2014 30 Mar 2014April 1, 2014 As a venture capitalist, I believe the hottest investment of 2014 is in the healthcare sector. The beauty of healthcare investing lies in the fact that the demand for the…
Alternative Investments… Venture Capital in Life Sciences (I): Personalized Medicine for Cancer Therapies 24 Feb 2014March 17, 2014 Over the past decade, the genomics revolution has led to the emergence of numerous groundbreaking personalized medicine as well as multiple diagnostic and therapeutic targets. Take the area of cancer…
Alternative Investments… Healthcare Investing: In Innovators We Trust, Up to the Future We Light 17 Feb 2014February 22, 2014 When people talk about “healthcare,” they probably refer to pharmaceuticals and health insurers, but the sector also covers life sciences and biotechnology, medical equipment manufacturers and services, hospitals, distributors, etc.…
Private Equity… Crowdfunding: A Powerful Model of Fundraising 10 Feb 2014April 29, 2026 Crowdfunding is an internet-based fundraising model, where individuals network and pool their money to support a certain project or venture. A crowdfunding activity is composed of a project creator, crowd…
Alternative Investments… Alternative Investments of 2013: Bitcoin, Yu’ebao, Tourmaline 比特币 余额宝 碧玺 3 Feb 2014February 10, 2014 Innovation almost always comes first with alternative investments, even if a type of alternative asset class may sound bizarre to conventional investors. Looking back at the year of 2013, many…
Alternative Investments… Real Estate Market – January 4, 2014 4 Jan 2014January 4, 2014 The total number of U.S. residents who signed contracts to buy existing homes was essentially unchanged in the fourth quarter of 2013, suggesting home sales are stabilizing after several months…
Alternative Investments… Passion Investments: Another Smart Choice for HNWIs 22 Dec 2013December 22, 2013 The 2013 World Wealth Report indicates that investor confidence in the wealth management industry has improved, and the level of trust in asset managers has risen slightly compared to the previous period.…
Alternative Investments… Real Estate Market Commentary – November 2013 15 Nov 2013 One year ending November 13, 2013, the average global non-listed real estate vehicles realized a total global return of 5.82 percent[1], as measured by the Global Real Estate Fund Index.…
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…
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%…
Alternative Investments… Approaches to Tail Risk Hedging in The Endowment Model 1 Sep 2013January 5, 2026 In the Foreword of David Swensen (2009), Charles Ellis commented that Yale was good at playing defense, because the endowment was built to withstand the inevitable storms that face capital…