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Peter J. de Marigny is Portfolio Manager of DITMo® Strategies, an Equity Hedge, Aggressive-Income Objective, Buy/Write Portfolio for an Aggressive-Income Objective used as an Enhanced Cash investment vehicle. Pj is also Head of Risk Alternative Strategies for Newport Beach, CA advisor Renovatio Asset Management. » View Peter J. de Marigny
Ryan Conner is Principal at HedgeCo Securities. As an experienced industry veteran, Ryan Conner offers his opinions on the hedge fund industry and hedge fund strategies.
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Rashida Fleet is involved with consulting and working with managers during the fund launch phase. Her work includes; interviewing managers, collecting information for the HedgeCo database and contributing to the HedgeCo News feed.
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Tim Seymour is co-founder and managing partner of Red Star Asset Management, as well as Chief Operating Officer of the $116 million Red Star Double Alpha Fund.
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Richard Heller Richard Heller is a partner at the New York City law firm of Thompson Hine LLP. His experience is in the formation of private offerings for hedge funds as well as the formation of registered broker-dealers and RIAs.
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Bret Rosenthal Principal of RCM, LLC, and founding partner of the Fortune's Favor Family of Funds.
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Cameron Hight, CFA, is an investment industry veteran with experience from both buy and sell-side firms, including CIBC, DLJ, Lehman Brothers and Afton Capital. He is currently the Founder and President of Alpha Theory™, a Portfolio Management Platform designed to give fundamental money managers the ability to create their own repeatable discipline to organize the complex process of portfolio management.
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Liquidity is a critical, yet often overlooked, risk constraint.  The reason it is frequently ignored is because position size is throttled by heuristics and mental calculation instead of having a repeatable method to factor liquidity into how the fund sizes positions.  Alpha Theory has developed a simple calculation to help determine portfolio liquidity constraints.

Start by determining the minimum and maximum position size you will allow for your portfolio.  If you don’t have those pre-defined, see why it is important here.  We’ll start by assuming a minimum position size of 1% and a maximum of 10%.  Then determine how many days you are willing to trade to get out of a position, we’ll assume 5 and what percentage of the volume you are willing to be, we’ll assume 20%.  Now we can calculate a minimum liquidity and preferred liquidity for the portfolio:

5 Days to Exit Position
x
20% of Daily Volume
x
1% and 10% Minimum and Maximum Position Sizes
x
$500 M Fund Value
=
$5 M Minimum Liquidity and $50 M Preferred Liquidity

Liquidity is measure by a stocks average dollar volume (average daily volume x stock price)

Now we have defined a spectrum of liquidity for our portfolio.  We cannot invest in an asset that trades less than $5 M per day and we are not concerned about liquidity for any asset that has over $50 M of average dollar volume.

For that assets that fall in between, we can derive a maximum position size we are willing to take given the stocks average dollar volume.  For instance, we are considering putting Stock ABC in our portfolio and it trades $25 M per day, which is above our minimum but not quite at our preferred.  To determine the maximum position size we are willing to take for Stock ABC:

$25 M Liquidity (Average Dollar Volume)
/
$500 M Fund Value
/
20% of Daily Volume
/
5 Days to Exit Position
=
5% Maximum Position Size

This is an important calculation that should be part of any portfolio risk control arsenal and the Liquidity Derived Maximum Position should be known for every investment prior to beginning the research process.  No need to do work on a name that you can’t add to the portfolio anyway


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  1. September 21st, 2009
    11:50 pm

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