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HedgeCo.net (New York) – "Attitudes towards hedge fund risk are poised to change," Sara Grillo, Founder of the Coalition for Safer Hedge Funds said in a paper examining proposed improvements in risk measurement, "The evolution will have positive results for the industry."
The paper also analyses the consequences of risk on portfolio performance, the report predicts that regulatory scrutiny will be the catalyst that forces risk levels down and ultimately drives the industry toward a period of maturity. Within this more stable environment, inflows from retail and institutional investors will surge, leading to the emergence of hedge funds as a more popular investment choice amongst the investing public.
Many academics believe that hedge fund returns are not predictable, and that the only persistent factor in performance history is risk itself. Research conducted by Martin Herzberg and Maim Mozes articulates the notion that less risky funds persistently are more likely to outperform riskier ones in the long term. Riskier managers are likely to take large directional “bets” which may crash when the market trends reverse. Less risky funds base decisions on fundamental skill and are less correlated with markets.
The role of high risk funds, Herzberg and Mozes believe, should be to diversify a portfolio rather than act as the main source of return. Aside from investment style, Herzberg and Mozes cite the other factors that affect returns such as the fund size, growth in assets under management, and length of investment history. They note that funds with shorter track records tend to exhibit higher returns than ones with longer track records. They identify the reasons to be their more experimental style, lack of controls, lack of auditing, and self-selection. Herzberg and Mozes hypothesise that funds with lower levels of assets under management tend to outperform, but this tendency fades as assets increase. Additional assets are placed in cash or must be placed with secondary managers, dragging down alpha.
The show is not over yet, she says. In fact, it is just beginning. As attitudes towards risk evolve, there is still plenty more room for the industry to grow. Although industry scandals have left investors reeling, scepticism will fade as industry regulation will increase transparency.
Increased scrutiny by industry watchdogs will lead to the normalisation of risk and return, which will ultimately decrease the level of hedge fund volatility. As volatility levels normalise, hedge funds will become more popular with retail investors and pension funds.
This surge in demand will propel the industry through its lifecycle until it reaches its ultimate maturation level. Regulatory developments and their effect on risk will be the catalyst that leads to the emergence of hedge funds as a prominent investment option amongst the investing public at large.
Sara Grillo earned her B.A. from Harvard University with honors. She is currently enrolled in a M.B.A program at the New York University Stern School of Business. She passed the CFA Level One examination in June 2003, and is a affiliate member of the New York Society of Securities Analysts and the CFA Institute.
Guardian.co.uk – No single hedge fund today poses a systemic risk to the global financial system, said a former partner at Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), as lawmakers continue to hammer out rules to control the industry.
Even though many funds are now much larger than LTCM, which collapsed in 1998 and received a $3.5 billion bailout to avert widespread financial chaos, Hans Hufschmid, currently chief executive at fund servicing firm GlobeOp, said prime brokers now act as an effective brake on hedge fund risk. "I find it hard to believe — I don’t think a hedge fund today is big enough to pose a systemic risk," he said.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge fund risk and regulatory compliance solutions provider, FRSGlobal, is preparing to work with the hedge fund industry to help it comply with the new wave of global regulations expected to be in place later this year.
Compliance experts within FRSGlobal’s Centre of Risk & Regulatory Excellence (CoR2E) are actively monitoring the discussions taking place at the various U.S. regulatory agencies and are ready to advise hedge funds on the best ways to automate their reporting processes as soon as any new legislation is enacted.
"U.S. regulators are demanding more oversight of the hedge fund industry which means that registration is imminent, "Richard Ferrari, FRS Vice President, commented, "Hedge funds are going to be subject to far greater scrutiny than ever before. Whether it is increased transparency around the trading and valuation of OTC derivatives and structured products or the amount of leverage being taken on, regulators are going to require comprehensive, timely and accurate reporting, a requirement that hedge funds typically have little experience of.
"While the exact form of regulatory reporting is still to be finalized, it is clear from our discussions with market participants and U.S. governing bodies that there is going to be an overwhelming need for the kind of flexible risk and regulatory reporting tools developed by FRSGlobal that have helped hundreds of banks worldwide meet the their regulatory needs over the past twenty years. This experience and expertise is now going to be available to the hedge fund industry."
FRSGlobal’s unified platform has coverage for over 30 countries.
Alex Akesson
Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: alex@hedgeco.net
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West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – As investors look to independent and unbiased hedge fund risk due diligence, Pelorus Advisors has decided to launch an operational risk management service for hedge fund investors. Unlike other due diligence firms, Pelorus only offers its risk due diligence service to hedge fund investors.
“It’s an enormous conflict of interest for diligence teams to be compensated by the same hedge funds they cover,” said Jeff Rathgeber, co-founder and partner of Pelorus. “The hedge fund community has seen more than enough target-sponsored ‘independent’ report cards. We’ll let other risk management firms issue their seals of approval based on manager-supplied data.”
Pelorus is staffed by a team of hedge fund experts that have spent years operating inside complicated hedge fund structures. “It is only from this vantage point that an advisory firm gains the experience needed to identify the true risks that hide within hedge funds,” said Ken McGee, Managing Director of Pelorus’ Hedge Fund Practice Group. “It is exactly this kind of experience that is missing from most hedge fund due diligence firms. In our opinion, this lack of inside experience is what moves most firms away from being Hedge Fund Risk Experts and moves them into the category of Data Regression Analysts.”
“A clear distinction that separates Pelorus Advisors from other firms is that we don’t harvest massive amounts of publicly available data, crunch it, and issue armchair reports to investors,” said Rathgeber. “Nor do we merely rely on data that is supplied by the target hedge funds we audit. Instead, we conduct in-depth, on-site engagements to dig deep into a hedge fund’s operations and run through its control structure to ensure that our clients’ investments are properly protected.”
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