Hedge Funds

The paper examines the investment activities of Swiss National Bank during last years and especially what is the nature of these activities, what is their scope, what are their financial grounds, what possible consequences could they lead to, and why are they so disconcerting for the financial world. The study finds that the Swiss National Bank operates as a quasi-government hedge fund following the global macro investment strategy. In fact the SNB is increasing the Swiss francs in circulation in order to make investments in foreign debt instrument and stocks. The study states that such kind of interventions from the leading central banks in the world in the pricing mechanism of global financial markets can reduce the scope of operations of portfolio managers and turn investing into a constant game of guesswork and tracking the behaviour of certain central banks or juggling with investment assets which actual value is unknown and immeasurable and more impornant - to lead to investment bubbles, financial and economic crises.

Using objective measures of investor protections in 170 countries, I establish that the level of investor protection matters for cross-country differences in GDP growth: countries with stronger protections tend to grow faster than those with poor investor protections.

This brief paper provides an example of the use of Altman's Z-Score in evaluating the probability of municipal default. It includes a short discussion of hedge fund strategy with regard to municipal default and advances an argument that political and institutional factors should be taken into account in addition to quantitative metrics when evaluating the investment risk of municipal debt.

Definición de Fondos Buitres. El término, surgido en el ámbito de las finanzas y luego de uso extendido, designa de manera coloquial y peyorativa a fondos privados de inversión de comportamiento altamente especulativo y litigante. Estos fondos compran títulos de deuda externa de países –y excepcionalmente de empresas- que se dirigen o ya entraron en una cesación de pagos, y por ende cotizan a no más del 15% o el 20% de su valor nominal, y luego reclaman el cobro del valor total de esa deuda mediante litigios en tribunales externos a los del país deudor (usualmente los EE.UU. o el Reino Unido). La denominación fondos buitres (en inglés, vulture funds), busca caracterizar el comportamiento de inversores que se abalanzan sobre la deuda de los Estados en crisis tal como las aves carroñeras lo hacen con sus presas a punto de fallecer.

Во всем мире индустрия хедж-фондов является самой динамично развивающейся отраслью коллективных инвестиций, совокупная стоимость активов которой превышает $2 трлн и продолжает неуклонно расти. Среди инвесторов хедж-фондов все чаще встречаются крупные институциональные структуры, а многие страны стремятся создать благоприятные условия для развития этой индустрии на своей территории. В чем же причина их популярности и почему они практически отсутствуют в России?

We present a detailed study of portfolio optimisation based on cointegration, a statistical tool that here exploits a long-run equilibrium relationship between stock prices and an index price. We compare the theoretical and empirical properties of cointegration optimal equity portfolios with those of portfolios optimised on the tracking error variance. From an eleven year out of sample performance analysis we

In my master thesis, I try to understand how illiquidity impacts on the fees asked by manager in the Hedge Fund industry. Conversely with previous works, the relation between High-Water Mark is shown less obvious. I explain it because of other devices, redemption constraints. One of the main achievements of this paper is to provide a characterization of "illiquid asset holding" funds, relating the asset holding with the strategy of the fund and its compensation scheme.

A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) is a company with no commercial operations that is formed strictly to raise capital through an initial public offering (IPO) for the purpose of acquiring an existing company. Also known as "blank check companies," SPACs have been around for decades. In recent years, they've become more popular, attracting big-name underwriters and investors and raising a record amount of IPO money in 2019. In 2020, as of the beginning of August, more than 50 SPACs have been formed in the U.S. which have raised some $21.5 billion (Investopedia).

The paper discusses global macro as a strategy which went out of favour after the LTCM debacle. It uses four case studies and despite the draw backs - a small number of experienced managers - concludes that the strategy can offer diversification and hedging in a portfolio.

Risk is a crucial factor for any investor in making all types of financial investments. It is a psychological and mental process of decision making based on an individual’s frame of reference that changes from time to time. This report explores individual investor’s preference for portfolio choices and investigates impacts of risk tolerance and risk perception on their investment decision. An attempt is also made to understand the factors affecting risk appetite of a person.
Primary and secondary research is conducted to gather the data from 100 respondents from Delhi, for this study and it is analyzed that the overall risk perception level of investors is moderate to high and there is no significant relationship between gender and investment choices. This implies that the sample does not prove that a particular gender has a higher or a lower degree of risk tolerance. It is also observed that experience in stock market has a higher significance on the level of risk appetite of a person and as experience increases, the risk-taking capability also increases. The reason for overall moderate-risk perception among these 100 respondents could be the average level of financial awareness and knowledge about markets and finance because 60% of the respondents belong to the age group of 18-40 years and hence it can be said that they have comparatively more knowledge about finance and investment.  Yet, the knowledge about finance and financial market is not sufficient enough to increase their risk-taking capacity.

The credit crunch was most likely viewed as a mixed blessing by many private equity executives. On the one hand, it signalled the end of the most favourable set of economic conditions the private equity industry had ever witnessed: abundant capital, low interest rates, increasing stock market values and a truly amazing willingness amongst banks and other investors to provide

Keputusan Menteri Keuangan Nomor 113/KMK.08/2014 tentang Strategi
Pengelolaan Utang Negara Tahun 2014-2017 juga menyebutkan tentang penerapan
kebijakan hedging sebagai salah satu strategi pengelolaan utang.
Istilah hedging memang tidak asing bagi dunia usaha swasta tetapi untuk
implementasi di kepemerintahan khususnya keuangan negara, hedging adalah konsep
yang baru. Isu kerugian atas kebijakan hedging serta belum memadainya pencatatan atas
pelaporan keuangan transaksi hedging adalah pertimbangan utama penerapan kebijakan
ini. Namun di sisi lain, ada manfaat besar yang dapat diperoleh Pemerintah jika kebijakan
hedging dilaksanakan secara tepat dan akurat

Guy Spier is a Zurich-based investor and founder of Aquamarine Capital’s privately offered investment funds, with assets under management valued at over $250M. He authored The Education of a Value Investor, perhaps the most untraditional book on investing ever written. He explained what a hedge fund does and his “Graham-Buffett-Munger-Pabrai philosophy” for investing and for living. Guy is one of the most global citizens I know. He was born in South Africa, grew up in Israel and Iran; lived in England and the US for school and work, and now Zurich. This episode was an intellectual treat for me, and for listeners as well. Guy not only lives his life in full, but he is so open to helping many others to do the same. He is a treasure.

This article argues that a nexus exists between private profit-orienteded actors (privateers and hedge funds) — being only lightly regulated by their home countries (Britain and America) — and ‘offshore’ territories located in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the Anglo-Saxon world. This article argues that the ultimate reason for this nexus is the common ‘Lockean’ state/society complex of the UK and the US. The analysis of hedge funds as privateers reveals that both benefit at the expense of others, while the geographic regions in which they are based are virtually the same — London and New York/Boston. Furthermore, this article shows that the hedge fund ‘value chain’ is clearly dominated by the US and the UK. Most hedge funds are based in Offshore Financial Centres (OFCs). While this is commonplace, by introducing the OFC-Intensity Ratio we show that the most intensive OFCs are under the sovereignty of the US and the UK.