By William (Bill) J. Kelly, President and CEO of the CAIA Association. I spent last week at the SALT Conference in NYC, and it felt great to be back in a zoom-free zone. It was less of a global crowd this year due to COVID travel restrictions but nonetheless, you always learn a lot […]
By John Bowman, CFA, Senior Managing Director at CAIA Association “Of the maxims of orthodox finance, none, surely, is more antisocial than the fetish of liquidity” – John Maynard Keynes Fashioning a common enemy is the work of a brilliant politician, military general, or coach. When well executed, it results in unmatched solidarity and emotional […]
By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association. Whac-a-mole is a carnival game developed in the early 1970’s. Points are accumulated by anticipating which of the five holes the persistent mole will pop out of next. The object is to ‘whac’ him as quickly and as hard as you can, only to have the seemingly endless process continue […]
Christopher M. Schelling, CAIA, Director of Alternative Investments for Venturi Wealth Management. Alpha versus beta is the single biggest debate in all of investing. Does it make more sense to simply passively accept the market return, or is it worth it to actively select a subset of assets within a market in an attempt at beating […]
By Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM, FDP, Director of Global Content Development, CAIA Association A machine learning algorithm walks into a bar. The bartender says, “What’ll you have?” The algorithm says, “What’s everyone else having?” – Someone funny on Reddit. Machines can sift through higher volumes of data at a far faster rate than humans […]
By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association AllAboutAlpha.com was founded by our friend and former colleague Christopher Holt, PhD in 2006. Global hedge fund AUM had just breached $1T for the first time, private capital stood at a skinny $1.5T, the S&P 500 was trading at just under 1,300, and the 10 YR treasury was yielding 4.5%. Single-digit (entry) private market […]
By Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM, FDP, Director, Global Content Development at CAIA Association Steve Wozniak: “You can’t write code… you’re not an engineer… you’re not a designer… you can’t put a hammer to a nail […] So how come ten times in a day, I read Steve Jobs is a genius? What do you […]
By Bill Kelly, CEO, CAIA Association Pity the poor misunderstood canary. It was in the early 1900s in Yorkshire when they were first chosen to die on a hill that they would likely have volunteered to die on anyway. It was that important then and even more important today. It turns out they were trying […]
By Aaron Filbeck, CFA, CAIA, CIPM, FDP, Director, Global Content Development at CAIA Association One of my favorite sci-fi movies of all time is Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. While there so many great elements to the film, including a killer score, one of the most interesting tensions that emerges from the plot is the intersection of […]
By John Bowman, CFA, Senior Managing Director, CAIA Association This article was originally posted on FundFire on March 24, 2021. Alternative fund manager due diligence has an execution problem. The evidence is mounting that investors, managers, and consultants agree the typical fund vetting process overlooks increasingly important qualitative factors that can determine future performance success […]