Who cares about 10 years ago if I'd invested last year I'd be seething, what a rubbish performance, it's not like the markets haven't returned, they should have lumped into a tracker fund - very lame! Heads should roll for this tripe.
If they did 80%+ in 2003 and 40%+ in 2005, then why are they only averaging 25% annually? Makes me wonder about their other years. And if they were in business since 1996, that means they got to capitalize on the rah rah 1990s. That alone can bring up their annualized returns quite high and distort the picture. Seems like they are quite sporadic and have significant drawdowns. Or are just inconsistent. And when it comes to managing big money, consistency is more important than an occasional homerun year. Only excuse for any fund of this type is their size.
What do you expect, they hired a crew who know how to blow things up. Why hire a team who just lost billions, Oh maybe the learned from their mistakes.
Litterman's "Active Alpha" video series: http://www2.goldmansachs.com/client.../active_alpha/active_alpha_basics.html#videos
There´s relative value in your comments. Mark Carhart and Raymond Iwanowski are struggling for 16 month right now. At this point I would get a little bit more concerned about the "stability" of the investment team...
It's a global macro fund betting on macro events to unfold in currencies, volatility, interest rates and commodities. These types of funds usually have zero correlation with "the markets" and don't gain nor lose nor care much if stocks indexes are up or down. That's the whole idea of investing in them for big institutional investors in the first place: a means for diversification vs. stocks and bonds. If they "lumped into a market tracker fund" how would they generate uncorrelated returns Some reading might help the confusion: "Goldman Sachs Asset Management has coined money for years. After a subpar 2006, can it restore the luster?" http://www.iimagazine.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=1325069&PositionID=24127
"The fund had made bets that currencies, including the Canadian dollar and Norwegian krone, would decline, but they increased, and it suffered from market-neutral investments in the fixed-income and equity markets." They bet against the Looney? What the? Now that is funny! Just goes to show, the average guy could do as well as almost any hedgefund clown! Contrarian trading is what blew Amaranth up, and it will now invade Goldman. It does sometimes work, but in this case shows little regard for any real understanding of the markets at all. Why Goldman and these big funds use the boys club is beyond me, what a waste. The whole topic makes me laugh, anybody can make a Macro call, and be right 50 % of the time, and make a killing, the other half own all those CLO's late in the game!