Daniel Capocci, CAIA, the author of the December Member Poll, was the inspiration behind the forecast polls we began last month. He is also featured in this month’s Smart Moves.

Until early 2000, the bulk of the hedge fund industry assets was coming from individuals through direct investments into offshore and unregulated funds. After that the FoFs industry started to emerge. The main difference was that a fee was paid by investors to professional selectors to select the right funds to invest in and to create a diversified portfolio.

A few years later, managed accounts platform started to gain importance enabling allocators to invest into hedge funds without having a complete dedicated hedge fund due diligence team (qualitative and quantitative due diligence but also operational checks).

Finally, regulated so-called absolute return funds started to emerge. Then, 2008 happened. We are starting a new game and everything may stay the same or change.