http://www.emii.com/Articles/212611...tsche-Launches-First-HF-ETF.aspx?LS=EMS255160 Deutsche Launches First HF ETF Deutsche Bank has launched the world's first Exchange Traded Fund based on actual hedge funds, providing liquid, exchange-tradable access to the hedge fund asset class.
Damn. It figures -- now that the major HF collapse is over, they come out with this. How typical....last year just as the commodity bubble was bursting, UBS came out with long-only retail-oriented notes tied commodity indices. Those went nowhere but down, down, down. Wish this was around 2 years ago, it'd have been a great short.
Actually, tracking hedge fund *indices* seems to be the first sensible attempt to produce an actively managed ETF. And its portfolio is UCITS-compliant too, i.e. much safer than American LLC's. No Madoff schemes possible here: independent regulator-approved onshore fund administrators are required, and exchange listing in Ireland gives additional security. No Amaranth-style blow-ups are possible either, because an UCITS-compliant fund has its leverage limited to 2x (but still allowed for speculative purposes). Even the total expense ratio below 1% seems reasonable (just see those second-level fees of a typical Fund of HF's...). OK, I admit it - European red tape wins hands down on this one - exporting alpha via a stock exchange would not be possible for US hedge funds - LLCs are just plain to risky on all counts. Go on, Interactive, the ticker is XHFI: http://www.dbxtrackers.de/DE/showpage.asp?pageid=143&inrnr=153&pkpnr=465&stinvtyp= and it is an ETF listed on XETRA, so no one will blame you if you enable it for all of us, not merely German or EU citizens. Looks like the first cross-border marketable hedge fund! Such a pity that market neutral strategies have a mere 4% weight in its portfolio... but what else do you expect from an indexer - 'value weighting' translates here into 'strategy capacity weighting'.
Why "pity" ? DTD MTD YTD INDEX VALUE Feb 09 ROR YTD 2008 2007 2006 HFRX Equity Market Neutral Index -0.4464% -1.27% -2.20% 1019.95 -0.95% -0.95% -1.16% 3.11% 4.76%:
Actually it is not better than shorting an index ETF. Market went down -38% last year, the average HF only -18%....