Asset management has always been a difficult practice to analyse. On the one hand, most of us tend to believe that high-end fund managers and professional traders are privy to information and analysis techniques that bring about a certain level of success or accuracy. On the other, it is also

Compared to the actual frontier of Finance, by modern standards the long-standing opportunity set for hedge fund managers and “Alternatives” was all, well, rather predictable, a bit stagnant. From bond curve steepening and flattening, bond risk stripping, venture capital, private equity, private debt, equity arbitrage, risk premia stripping, carry-trades, commodities,

In all the years, I have spent tracking mutual funds and asset managers, I have rarely encountered an explicit display of aggression in public domain. Aggression is a trait that one tends to associate with sportsmen or the occasional politician. Conversely, in the world of asset management, being calm and

Last week, I ran into an acquaintance who is an investment adviser. Expectedly, the conversation veered towards the state of markets, clients and investment avenues. The gentleman had a rather peculiar complaint. He said “my clients engage me for investment advice, and I am paid a fee for the same;

We are seeing the move to automated and self-learning tools to support fund selection decisions. Tools like ‘Morningstar Q ratings’ is just the start. This early adoption of AI could in turn introduce new biases, behaviors and challenges to the wisdom of the crowd of fund buyers. How then best

Private debt as a separately recognised asset class has been growing in importance over the last five years. According to data from Preqin, the number of private debt funds was close to 400 by the middle of last year, and the sector as a whole is outpacing the growth in

From day one we used the slogan 'Investing Better. Together.' to express our vision of improving the investment prospects of our community members by allowing them to share investment ideas. So far we have successfully gathered over 11k professional fund buyers from 71 countries and are now ready to

Value. Much emphasis is placed on the consideration of cost, economies of scale and other factors for the upcoming Assessment of Value (AoV). Performance is included; yet to date has been given little more than a cursory reference; despite being the most challenging and subjective component of the AoV. Can

In March, Japan’s ¥158trn (€1.2trn) Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) and Sony Computer Science Laboratories (SCSL) developed a deep learning prototype “to detect the investment style of managers”. The resulting AI technology had been programmed to differentiate between fund managers’ styles and associated drifts, “enabling evidence-based, prompt analysis

Over >30 years working in the financial services industry, it’s always frustrated me that most financial services advice delivered to individuals is, bluntly, awful. But maybe, at last, fintech could give cause for optimism. To start with, the gripes. Sometimes there’s genuine bad intent. The very first

SharingAlpha went live 30 month ago. At the time we were too busy getting the initial users on board and skipped the stage of sitting down and writing our goals. Now that we have gathered over 1,700 vetted members from 65 countries we decided to put them in writing.

Fund selection is a relatively niche research function as compared to Equity/Fixed Income Research as well as investment banking and remains relatively underexplored from the perspective of outsourcing. Let's use outsourcing with a dual connotation, one traditional we are all well aware off and second in a broader sense

Just over 30 years ago, a seminal paper was published about the various contributions to portfolio returns. The authors examined US pension plans to try and ascertain the contributions of asset allocation, market timing and security selection. Their conclusion was that on average close to 94% of a portfolio’s

Where are my sunglasses, the glare of regulatory change is getting brighter for we fund buyers? Later this month I will be heading to South Africa in the latest chapter of a suitcase fund analyst. I will be there on work as author of New Fund Order, guest speaker courtesy

Much “investor education” involves persuading savers that they need to invest in listed equity assets in order to build their wealth. This is outdated advice. The argument is that long-term wealth accumulation, to fund long-term liabilities such as retirement or childrens’ education, needs higher returns (and therefore higher risk) than

Quality. What is it? How do fund buyers assess the changing quality of fund manager portfolios and can quality really be accessible at a reasonable price? Can quality arise in value and growth tilted portfolios and at any size? Does quality change through the cycle or only its price? How

Greetings my fellow followers of the ‘New Fund Order’ where fund management meets futurism. Where Marx meets Metropolis. Since my last column I became unexpectedly bionic. Alas no mind implants or symbiotic algorithmic Uber Fund Selection nodes (yet). A humble accident led to a leg operation and I find myself

Alternative Investments – hedge funds, real estate, commodities, private equity, structured products, and the like – as opposed to stocks and bonds. But alternative investing is as much a mindset, as it is about specific investments. Alternative investment approaches are used every day by investors around the world, that are applicable to

This past year was an important period for the investment management industry. Globally, extraordinary stock market appreciation triggered rising flows into pooled investment funds (mutual funds, ETFs, UCITs, CITs, etc.). Such inflows totaled a record of near $2 trillion. Yet, participation in the industry’s organic growth remains highly concentrated,

SharingAlpha offers a range of unique and significant benefits to its growing community of professional fund buyers: As a Community member you can build your own proven track record in terms of your fund selection capabilities. By rating a number of funds in terms of their chances of creating alpha

Now that I got your attention (by including the word Bitcoin in the headline...) I wish to tell you about a meaningful change in the asset management industry (don't worry, I'll come back to investing in Bitcoin). Fund Research 2.0 19 years ago, when Stephen Kaufer, the founder of

Dear New Fund Order followers and fellow colleagues, salutations from your humble suitcase fund analyst. Apologies for the lack of recent activity but I have been again on my travels far and wide discussing best practice in fund selection, technology and ESG. Most recently I sat on an advisory panel