Alpha Mail (Sep 9)

Alpha Mail - A monthly email update from AllAboutAlpha.com

Dear Alpha Mail Subscriber:

It's a new day at AllAboutAlpha.com. If you haven't visited in a while, we suggest you stop by and have a look at our newly redesigned site. You'll now find over 1,080 posts covering everything we think you should know about hedge fund industry trends, 130/30, portable alpha, liability-driven investing, hedge fund replication, fees, metrics, regulation and more. To make searching this database even easier, everything on the site can be found using the same search bar (posts, events, books, links, even the AllAboutAlpha "Hall of Fame").

Our highly focused news clippings are easier to scan and are categorized into easy-to-navigate sections. Looking for useful stories on 130/30, for example? We've posted links to every single 130/30 article we've seen in the past 2 years that we felt was interesting. Just click the "news clippings" tab above today's post on the site.

You can use your email address as both a user ID and password to access a few areas of the site right now (e.g. some of the research from our industry partner Morgan Stanley). But our dossiers have been moved to a paid subscription model so that we can give them the attention they deserve. As of today, there are nearly 200 PDF white papers in this repository - 4 times the number on the old site.

Naturally, we hope you continue to find AllAboutAlpha.com a useful research tool during these times of dramatic change in the asset management industry. But if you just want to read our daily blog in more traditional chronological format, all you have to do is click on the "Recent Posts" tab and select "more..." (or just click here)

Last Month's Most Popular Posts

Okay, enough with the new site. On to last month's top 10 list. Here are the most-read posts at AllAboutAlpha.com in August:

Fees: Six of one or half-dozen of the other: A great article by Mark Kritzman of Windham Capital poses the question "who charges more, hedge funds or mutual funds?" What he finds may surprise you.
Like real estate, hedge funds all about location, location and location: An academic study confirms what many small emerging hedge funds have argued for years - it pays to have "feet on the ground".
"Return persistence" can now be viewed with the naked eye: Swiss researchers say they have made visual contact with the elusive quality that gives rise to true alpha - return persistence. And it sure is a colorful creature.
A picture of the "betafication" of alpha: MIT's widely-quoted professor Andrew Lo shifts from words to pictures in an effort to describe the evolution of alpha.
Media Insana-ty?: Citizen Insana turns his back on the career that brought him to the dance. What's next for the remaining financial journalists?
Hedge funds changing tack: Like sailors making their way slowly upwind, hedge funds are beginning to beat a path into market headwinds.
Alternative Viewpoints: "Higher Moment Betas": Mikael Haglund, CAIA, explains why there's a lot more to beta that meets the eye.
Hedge Fund "Forum Shopping": Are hedge fund jurisdictions engaged in a "race to the bottom", where the least stringent regulations attract the most hedge funds? Not at all, says a new report. (Also, you'll never guess who has one of the most and least restrictive hedge fund laws in the world.)
What's behind the drop in mutual fund alpha?: It turns out that hedge funds aren't the only ones finding that alpha is growing scarce.
Hedge fund IPOs: sure, many have stunk - but what does that say about hedge funds in general?: It's easy to get investors riled up over poorly performing IPOs. But that's little evidence that hedge funds as an asset class, are either shrinking or underperforming the market.