Don't blame the hedge fund managers for not providing easy access to the information you are looking for -- it was Congress who passed the 1933 Securities Act that made it illegal. The hedge funds are just obeying the law. Aaron Schindler Schindler Trading
i am not blaming the managers . These laws to protect investors from themselves have in effect created all these middlemen I am talking about and have only made it easier for the very wealthy to get even richer. All you have to do is make sure managers won't run away with investor's money when you think of it investing in a stock is a lot riskier than investing in a hedge fund.
My observation has been there were (probably still are) some problems, imo, regarding accuracy and reliability of the data/ information listed on iasg.com (probably other HF database sites would have the same or similar problems). It seems to me a fund's operator could be allowed to enter whatever information (s)he would like to openly publish (advertise?) on the site, without worrying any auditing or DD consequence. According to the printouts I keep on hand, there were cases including a couple of funds completely removing the old data of poor performance by replacing it with new data of good performance, with a minor change of the fund's name. One fund was completely deleted from the site, perhaps due to false performance data (winning 100% for all 80 months, Consecutively ). I could not find any information about the fund and its operators' names (including a finance professor at CUNY) on the Internet. What I could find over the Internet appears the name of the fund listed on iasg.com was the same name of another fund operated by other institution (without any reference to the three operators of the fund listed on iasg site).
Performance reporting is voluntary. I have noted odd comings and goings as well. I agree any database could have similar issues. I guess it's important to note that these are "reported" results, and in fact anyone can report anything. There are a few new funds that appeared recently that have good reported performance, however a search of the NFA site on the principle names revealed that they have been involved with a number of funds over the last four or five years that have not experienced good performance. Some basic DD is always in order.
I thought ETers would get a laugh out of this... This is a question from the CALPERS Emerging Manager Questionnaire being done by Altura Capital... Now, did they mean "whichever is shorter"? Or do I get to fabricate the performance for the period before inception back to 5 years ago? I'm sure I can fabricate something pretty attractive. And then the Chart No. 2 that I'm supposed to fill out has boxes for January through December for 2000 through 2004. 5 years ago would be May, 2001. So I don't need a year 2000 row but rows for 2005 and 2006 would be nice. Grrrr. I hate filling out due dilligence forms. Aaron Schindler Schindler Trading
would it help your business if there were some sort of standard due diligence form, like the common application used by many universities?
There is an industry standard produced by AIMA - www.aima.org. But many investors have their own unique DD forms. My gut still tells me they don't read/study them or understand them. It's all for show fluff. As anecdotal confirmation of this I read somewhere where a F-o-F manager confessed that a lot fo the quantitative analysis was all "BS", that they relied on gut feel to invest. Well, I can't question anyone's basis for investig, but if you invest based on fluff/gut instincts, then please DON'T waste my time completing 30 page forms you won't read.