Tough Minded Investment Manager Analysis

Someone Else You Should Read Before You Read Me.

Veryan Allen lives in Tokyo and, apparently, trades the market full time.  He also writes short, occasional articles on hedge fund topics.  You should read him because he is gutsy and mostly right.
  
For example, Mr. Allen has a nice post on “portable alpha” on his website.  In his opinion, and mine, this is a concept we can do without.  Portable alpha is a marketing concept, an attempt to fit hedge fund concepts into the pigeon holes of long-only institutional investor logic and it does so badly.  As a concept it hides the benefits and disguises the risks of hedge fund investing.  It is a lie and many of our potential customers understand this and, because they understand this, they do not do business with us.  Portable alpha is a lie that is, unfortunately, deeply embedded in our industry’s self-image and promotional brochures and Mr. Allen should be honored for exposing it.  We need to follow his lead.

Mr. Allen is a reasonably good writer.  Some of his posts are a little too short, in my opinion, and a few of them are a little shrill.  Unfortunately, most of us have that problem, at least, part of the time.  I hate being noble, but on several issues his thinking is more insightful than mine. I think highly of my own ability to analyze new investment methods.  I would put myself in the top 1% of investment analysts in this regard.  Nevertheless, several of his articles on investment methods contain insights that I would never have come up with.  I don’t know about you, but that’s enough for me to take him very seriously indeed.  Click here to go to his website.