Choice can be a double-edged sword: with idiosyncratic reward comes idiosyncratic risk. And with alternative investments come alternative ways to make bad decisions.
Case in point: the dreaded "drawdown." As we learned last month, a big, fat drawdown can often be a harbinger of great things to come.
We also learned that long commodity positions, viewed by many as the quintessential inflation hedge, may not actually be all they are reported to be.
Furthermore, according to one expert in the region last month, despite the much-ballyhooed "decoupling" of developing economies, Asian hedge funds have become more tightly correlated with each other.
Researchers also found that despite having "absolute return" objectives, hedge fund managers really do care about their relative performance (relative to their peers that is).
We learned that while mega-sized private equity funds are popular among mega-sized institutional investors, their returns are often decidedly "un-mega-sized" compared to their smaller cousins.
So apparently things aren't always the way they first appear. All the more reason to do your homework - starting with last month's top 10 at AllAboutAlpha.com...
