Book description
The dismal truth about hedge funds and how investors can get a
greater share of the profits
Shocking but true: if all the money that's ever been invested in
hedge funds had been in treasury bills, the results would have been
twice as good.
Although hedge fund managers have earned some great fortunes,
investors as a group have done quite poorly, particularly in recent
years. Plagued by high fees, complex legal structures, poor
disclosure, and return chasing, investors confront surprisingly meager
results. Drawing on an insider's view of industry growth during the
1990s, a time when hedge fund investors did well in part because there
were relatively few of them, The Hedge Fund Mirage chronicles
the early days of hedge fund investing before institutions got into
the game and goes on to describe the seeding business, a specialized
area in which investors provide venture capital-type funding to
promising but undiscovered hedge funds. Today's investors need to do
better, and this book highlights the many subtle and not-so-subtle
ways that the returns and risks are biased in favor of the hedge fund
manager, and how investors and allocators can redress the imbalance.
- The surprising frequency of fraud, highlighted with several
examples that the author was able to avoid through solid due
diligence, industry contacts, and some luck
- Why new and emerging hedge fund managers are where generally
better returns are to be found, because most capital invested is
steered towards apparently safer but less profitable large,
established funds rather than smaller managers that evoke the more
profitable 1990s
Hedge fund investors have had it hard in recent years, but The
Hedge Fund Mirage is here to change that, by turning the tables
on conventional wisdom and putting the hedge fund investor back on
top.
SIMON LACK has spent his entire career in trading
and hedge fund investing. After twenty-three years with JPMorgan, he
founded SL Advisors, LLC, a Registered Investment Advisor, in 2009.
Much of Lack's career with JPMorgan was spent in North American fixed
income derivatives and forward FX trading, a business that he ran
successfully through several bank mergers, ultimately overseeing fifty
professionals and 0 million in annual revenues. He sat on JPMorgan's
investment committee which allocated over billion to hedge fund
managers and founded the JPMorgan Incubator Funds, two private equity
vehicles that establish economic stakes for emerging hedge fund
managers. Lack's financial markets experience dates back to 1980 when
he began his career on the floor of the London Stock Exchange.
