Randy Cohen from Harvard Business School, Christopher Polk from the London School of Economics, and Bernhard Silli from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the London School of Economics, provide powerful evidence that mutual fund managers can pick stocks that outperform the market.
Chief investment officer of the US$81 billion Teacher Retirement System of Texas, Britt Harris, has offered to forego an estimated $167,935 in performance incentive pay for 2008. At the most recent board meeting, the TRS board accepted Harris’ offer and also voted to defer all remaining investment division performance pay until the fund experiences a year of positive returns. In 2008 the fund experienced a 27 per cent drop in market value.
The $4 billion Claremont University Consortium (CUC) has criticised the service small endowment funds in the US are receiving from their investment consultants, labelling the solutions as “cookie cutter, boilerplate answers”.
Sweden’s Third National Pension Fund, AP3, has rejigged its long-term strategic asset allocation and increased its exposure to alternatives. Kristen Paech talks to chief investment officer Erik Valtonen about the reasons behind the changes.
The peak body for the global hedge fund industry, the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) has backed a proposal mandating the full transparency and disclosure of ‘stematically significant’ positions and risk exposures held by hedge funds to their national regulators.
At the age of 82, modern portfolio theorist, Harry Markowitz still has a lot to say about the state of play in investment management. In the January/February issue of the Financial Analysts Journal, Makowitz who is president of Harry Markowitz Company and adjunct professor of finance at the Rady School at the University of California, outlines a proposal for gaining insight into complex financial instruments, which includes the government sponsoring a survey of direct and indirect exposures.