Multimedia Library

Hear our expert staff and Members speak on topics ranging from practical strategies in hedge fund investing to the importance of education in the alternatives space.

Following an exceptional run in 2021 and early 2022, the SPAC market cooled off through 2023. We are starting to see a return to normalcy and renewed activity with SPACs. In this market check-in webcast, we connected with Nick Skibo of Gritstone Asset Management, Tom Hennessy of Hennessy Capital Growth Partners, and Douglas Ellenoff of Ellenoff Grossman & Schole LLP, to discuss the state of the market for SPACs and the opportunity set for investors.

Allocating to illiquid assets brings an additional factor to the optimization process beyond risk and return: illiquidity. Join William Kinlaw, CFA, Senior Managing Director, Head of State Street Associates, and David Turkington, CFA, Senior Managing Director and Head of Portfolio and Risk Research, State Street Associates, as they discuss how to incorporate illiquidity of asset classes, such as private equity, into the asset allocation and portfolio construction process. This session is moderated by Lydia Ofori, CFA, CAIA, Founder & CEO, Hunter Labs Technologies.

Join Michelle Noyes, Managing Director, AIMA, as she hosts a panel of experts who aim to provide interns with a view to different paths a career in this industry can take.

Aaron Filbeck discusses the characteristics of hedge funds, including recent statistics on the growth of the industry and an overview of funds by age, domicile, and concentrations across the hedge fund universe. Aaron presents an overview of environmental, social, and governance investing (ESG), a discussion of the history of ESG investing, a comparison of the three primary approaches to ESG investing-socially responsible investing (SRI), impact investing and ESG integration- and discusses the three pillars of ESG: environmental, social, and governance.

The world of alternative investments continues to grow and change. Nearly $10 trillion in assets have flowed into the alternative investment industry in the last fifteen years. Now alternative investments are starting to show up in mutual funds and ETFs. What might the future hold? Keith Black, PhD, CAIA, CFA, FDP, Managing Director of Content Strategy, CAIA Association, and Michelle Noyes, CAIA, Managing Director, AIMA, discuss. 

During this webcast we address the story beyond the numbers of the manager selection process both globally and within the African continent. The Africa Rising narrative has been phenomenal for Africa and has led to several transformational developments. Africa continues to attract foreign institutional investors as well as a burgeoning set of local asset owners to the continent. These institutional investors utilize a broad array of alternative investment strategies in order to meet their investment and developmental objectives. We discuss asset allocation trends, evolving alternative investment strategies, and how to assess proper due diligence. In addition, learn the risks an asset owner should take into consideration and why qualitative factors are as important or more important than quantitative factors in alternative manager due diligence.

Commodities may serve as an important element of an investment portfolio. In this presentation, Dr. Keith Black provides an overview of commodities as an asset class, explore the historical performance of commodities, and comment on their role in asset allocation and inflation protection. We compare the differences between commodities and financial assets. Various methods of obtaining exposure to commodities are evaluated, and we conclude with a discussion of futures based commodities investments. The second half of our program features an interview with Kathryn Kaminski where we explore current topics in commodities investment and look specifically at rising inflation and the possible implications.

Leading pension investment experts share a candid discussion on the investment repercussions of the recently passed Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act of 2021 and the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA). The panelists also discuss the financial impact of the Acts on multi-employer pension plans as well as provide investment solutions to help all pensions more effectively achieve their investment targets and reduce funding deficits.

In a follow-up to Preqin’s 2020 study on Women in Alternative Assets, findings show where the biggest advances in female representation are being made, and where there is room for more proactive effort. The data in this report has been sourced from Preqin’s database of more than 200,000 industry professionals to highlight the trends in the workforces of active fund managers and investors. Listen in for a discussion on the highlights from this report and Preqin’s overview of the alternative investments landscape.

Tokenization could help to democratize multiple asset classes by providing accessibility to more investors, while enabling asset managers to innovate by creating alternative assets tokens, thereby furthering the expansion of their potential product mix. Yet, the applications of the technology are still in the early stages. Join Chapter co-hosts CAIA Houston, San Francisco, and our Rocky Mountain pre-Chapter, for a panel discussion on some of the investment applications and technological considerations of tokenized assets.

On average, venture capital and buyout funds experience a performance falloff after seven to eight years, while the cross-sectional dispersion among them increases. In this brief conversation, John Bowman and Greg Brown discuss Brown's article “The Evolution of Private Equity Fund Value” as it appeared in the spring edition of CAIA's official Member publication The Journal of Alternative Investments. Access the full article here (a CAIA exclusive). 

Interested in more on this critical topic? Join this upcoming webcast and keep an eye on the CAIA blog