Here's how much public pensions are in the hole by per U.S. resident From Value Walk: A lthough some government agencies have demonstrated a desire to deal with the pension crisis, the problem of unfunded liabilities continues to get worse year after year. A new report pegs U.S. public pensions' unfunded liabilities at nearly $6 trillion as of 2018. That amou...

From FT: Renaissance Technologies, one of the world's most influential and secretive hedge fund firms, has sharply cut back its use of strategies that bet on patterns in futures markets, a big sign of such strategies' waning popularity. US-based Renaissance, founded by former cold war codebreaker Jim Simons and with about $60bn in assets, reduced its use of such strategies in ...

Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York: Can automatic rebalancing end up doing investor portfolios more harm than good? A new study from Man Group suggests that automatic rebalancing can mean that investors sell out of profitable investments at exactly the wrong time. "Rebalancing is an active strategy that can actually end up making the impact of drawdowns on a portfolio worse...

B. G., Opalesque Geneva: The Cayman Islands' anti-money laundering (AML) requirements are still a bit up in the air, according to Bill Prew, CEO/founder at Indos Financial. Even though all open-ended, Cayman-domiciled hedge funds had to appoint three AML officers by September, there are still grey areas in such ...

Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia: A survey found that 51% of real estate investors were considering investing in opportunity zone funds (OZFs) in 2019, while a further 12% are interested in the longer term. A less widely publicized part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in the US was the creation of 8,700 "opportunity zones" - distressed areas in which capital gains tax on...

From Dadline: Showtime has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed against it, Billions creator Andrew Ross Sorkin and others by a Wall Street performance coach who claims to be the inspiration for a key character on the drama series. Denise Shull, who wrote the 2012 nonfiction book Market Mind Games, filed a copyright infringement suit in January claiming that the defendants "r...

Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York: Paris-based Tikehau Capital reported total AUM of over €22bn as of Dec. 31, 2018 - more than doubling its AUM within two years. The alternative asset manager focuses on private debt, real estate, private equity and liquid strategies. Tikehau, had set a goal of €21bn of asset under management by this point, but the firm says it was bolstered by ...

Indiana Public Retirement allocates $507m to 7 managers From PIonline.com: Indiana Public Retirement System, Indianapolis, announced commitments and investments totaling $507 million to nine alternative investment strategies run by seven managers from the system's $28.7 billion defined benefit plan. Investment officers of the fund, who have investment di...

From Value Walk: Lukasz Tomicki, the founder of Austin, TX-based LRT Capital, had a life-changing moment after he achieved a degree of success. This led him into the hedge fund business where his emerging strategy has outperformed the major stock and hedge fund indices, he told ValueWalk. How the fund outperforms "the markets" speaks to recognizing a long term trend in growing a "mo...

Royal London launches new Greetham fund From FT Adviser: Royal London's Multi Asset Strategies is the latest fund to be launched for Trevor Greetham and his eight-strong multi-asset team. It targets annualised total returns of cash, defined as the Sterling Overnight Index Average, plus 4 per cent over five-year rolling periods - aiming to capture marke...

B. G., Opalesque Geneva: Sani Jackson, London-based director at Optima Partners, a global regulatory compliance and risk management firm, warns UK-based fund managers of some (non-Brexit related) regulatory issues they cannot ignore this year. The UK FCA's ...

New hedge fund launches slowed 2019 From Business Insider: Becoming a hedge-fund manager in 2019 is harder than ever before. Increased costs for technology, data, and compliance staff, along with tougher regulatory standards, have made it more challenging to launch a fund without a strong pedigree or a big-name supporter. These pressures are coupled with continued d...

From Seeking Aplha: The ideal hedge fund portfolio would use leverage to take a variety of uncorrelated risks that all cancel each other out, leaving the fund with little to no net exposure. For example, if you could invest in enough items with no correlation to the business cycle, like earthquake bonds and reinsurance, your return increases linearly, but your risk only increases logarit...

Institutional investors plot large property allocations From FT: Institutional investors plan to make large allocations to property in 2019, taking them closer to their desired targets. At least €72.4bn of new capital is expected to flow into real estate this year, according to a survey of 144 institutional investors and 10 fund of fund managers, con...

Jeffrey Gundlach said that 2019 will mark the start of a period when bond markets must recon with the rising federal deficit. In his most passionate comments ever on this topic, he said the exploding national debt and liabilities involving pension funds, state and local government governments and Social Security have reached a stage that is "totally unthinkable." Gundlach is th...