LATEST BLOGS

A Lesson In Liquidity

A client called his broker inquiring about egg futures and is quoted a price of 25 cents per contract. Having a hunch about the egg market he buys 100 contracts. A week later he calls his broker to get a quote. Pleased to learn that the price of eggs has risen to 35 cents he…

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Dalai Lama

I came across these 18 rules from the Dalai Lama Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson. Follow the three Rs: Respect for self Respect for others Responsibility for all your actions. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful…

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A Blast From The Past

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I was going through my archive looking for a piece for the current mentor program when I came across this little gem  from the Eifuku Master Fund. By the way the name is not made up. This fund was run by a former employee of Lehmann Brothers in Tokyo. The letter speaks for itself. Memorandum…

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Bank of America: Too Crooked To Fail

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Another piece by Matt Taibbi and Rolling Stone, things strike me about this article. Firslty, if even a fraction of it is true then it a profoundly distressing since it is not only a reflection of of BofA but also US society in general. Secondly, why the f#%k cant our journalists and mainstream media be…

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Seven Sins Of Fund Management

Over the long weekend I came across this excellent primer on the behavioural issues facing investors. The link to the original follows at the end but I have snipped part of the first page below. Seven sins (common mistakes) were identified. The first was placing forecasting at thevery heart of the investment process. An enormous…

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Still Paying A Lot For Not Much

People invested in hedge funds are still paying a lot for very little in the way of actual return. Hedge funds were up 0.59% in March although they still trailed the S&P 500, which was up 3.13% for the month and 12.00% YTD. The Hennessee Hedge Fund Index is up 4.59% YTD. “Hedge funds posted…

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This Gives Me The Shits……

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I am a fan of internet shopping – I buy everything I can reasonably buy from the google box. Years of putting up with disinterested, surly and friggen ignorant shop assistants have been replaced by a relaxed approach to buying virtually anything I want in peace and quiet However, when buying a digital book of…

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Ever So Calm

This is the VIX over the past few years – as you can see the market seems to have calmed right down to historically low levels.  

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Poor Returns….Again

There appears to be a growing realisation that fund managers of all ilk are simply not delivering the returns they are being paid for. In fact the evidence seems to indicate that the majority of managers (>95%) are actually a drag on the performance of any given fund. Whilst, we tend to look as this…

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Deceptive Headline Of The Year…..So Far

Large Hedge Funds Fared Well in 2011 Apparently they didn’t – their managers did. I have written about this disconnect before, here and here There is a remarkable and somewhat unsavoury difference between what the people who run hedge funds make and what the people who invest in hedge funds make. As an example consider…

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