HedgeFundBlogger.com by Richard Wilson

Investor Due Diligence & Emerging Managers?

Richard@RichardCWilson.com (Richard C. Wilson) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:35:40 PDT

Investor Due Diligence & Emerging Managers?

My background is in marketing and I know one of the big challenges of raising capital for both emerging and medium sized hedge funds is that everyone wants their 3, 15 or 125 checkboxes to be complete. There are so many investment managers competing for capital that investors must limit who they seriously consider and complete expensive due diligence on to those which have top percentile performance, risk management tools, track records and AUM figures. This can be very frustrating and an ongoing challenge for many managers trying to grow their business and assets under management.

I got this email earlier today from a hedge fund manager:

"It would be interesting for you to post an article on how hedge funds that are doing well in 2009 are not necessarily the ones who will get capital given stricter due diligence requirements. For example, our fund, the XXXX XXXXX Fund was up over 50% through May and is up something in the range of 60% as an estimate through June yet it is still very difficult to raise capital because nobody wants to allocate to smaller funds."

and a follow up email from this same fund later in the day:

I have come across your page a bunch of times and I figured I would make the suggestion. When you think back to when hedge funds first became popular, having the best of the best portfolio managers manage money for the extremely wealthy was more of a status symbol than anything else. Alternative investments have obviously evolved over time. But the idea was that these investors would take some risk in order to enable their personal portfolio managers to generate outsized returns. People seem to lose sight of the fact that there is still a tremendous amount of talented, brilliant managers out there who have been through many cycles and have the capacity to do extremely in months and years to come. Now is a time when people who take risk will get richer. Yet people are so gun shy that they run the risk of overlooking the best talent and missing opportunities that may, in some cases, only be available to the 200mm or 300mm boutique shops. They lose sight of what the business is about, of what they invested with hedge funds for in the first place. Unfortunately, it has boiled down to investors being more concerned with checking boxes and analysts at institutional investment firms being more concerned with keeping their jobs than truly finding the best talent.

While I don't agree 100% with the statement above, the manger makes a few good points and I would be interested in more feedback that other managers have about overcoming the "checkbox mentality." If you have feedback please email me at Richard@hedgefundgroup.org.

If it may help we have a whole category of marketing and sales articles within our Hedge Fund Marketing Guide.

Related to Investor Due Diligence & Emerging Managers?

Tags: hedge fund, hedge funds, hedge fund investor due diligence, investor due diligence process, DDQ, investor due diligence on emerging hedge fund managers

Hedge Fund Marketing Speech | Practical Tips

Richard@RichardCWilson.com (Richard C. Wilson) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:14:28 PDT

Hedge Fund Marketing | Practical Tips

A few weeks ago I completed my speech on “5 Best Practices for Hedge Fund Marketing” at the Marcus Evans Fund of Hedge Fund Summit in Boca Raton, Florida. I got connected with some quality hedge fund contacts and ran into a few followers of our sites as well.

Below please find some of the most useful practical fund marketing tips that I suggested during my speech, the full video recording of the speech along with the PowerPoint will be available as part of the training materials within the Hedge Fund Group’s hedge fund certification program within the Level 2 Module on Marketing & Sales.

Focus on Building Authority above all else: The power of true authority within an industry trickles down and puts other influential factors into motion which help you develop valuable relationships
Move the Free Line: Give away your best ideas within press inquiries, books, interviews, articles, white papers and videos
Diverse Investor Case Studies: Have at least two case studies of investors choosing to place capital with your firm for each of the major distribution channels you are focusing on raising capital from. For example have six total case studies if 90% of your efforts are focused on family offices, wealth management firms, and HNW individual selling.
The 4 P’s of Marketing Materials: Focus on Pedigree, Process (USP), Portfolio Risk, and Presentation Quality

Learn more by reviewing our Hedge Fund Marketing & Sales Guide

If you are looking for a speaker on the topic of capital raising, alternative investments or hedge funds please click here.

Related to Hedge Fund Marketing Speech | Practical Tips

Tags: Hedge Fund Marketing, hedge funds marketing, marketing, sales, hedge fund sales, selling hedge funds, how to raise capital for a hedge fund, hedge fund marketing speaker

13F Analysis Of Caxton Associates | Holdings

Richard@RichardCWilson.com (Richard C. Wilson) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:25:51 PDT

Caxton Associates

Below please find a 13F analysis report for Caxton Associates for Q1 2009. 13F anal yses are reports that fund managers with over $100M are required to submit to the SEC, they are publicly available and these reports provide us with some insights on what some hedge fund managers have been investing in.

Caxton Associates, L.L.C., is a New York-based trading and investment firm formed as the successor to Caxton Corporation, which was founded in 1983 by Mr. Bruce Kovner. Caxton Associates’ primary business is to manage client and proprietary capital through global macro hedge fund strategies as well as other alternative investment disciplines.

• (ABT)Abbot Laboratories
• (CL) Colgate Palmolive
• (GIS) General Mills
• (GS) Goldman Sachs
• (JPM) Jp Morgan Chase
• (MON) Monsanto Co
• (NUE) Nucor Corp
• (OXY) Occedential Petroleum Corp
• (PM) Philip Moris International
• (QCOM) Qualcom
• (RTN)Raytheon Co
• (SCI) Service Corporation International
• (SWIM) THinkorswimGroup
• (V) Visa
• (WFC) Wells Fargo & Company

Using the TickerSpy portfolio analysis tool the graph to the left was created showing the approximate equity performance for Caxton Associates over the previous six months. According to this analysis Caxton Associates equity picks have been outperforming against the S & P 500 recently

The top 5 highest performing equities which for Caxton Associates held as of this 13F filing include (QCOM), (WFC), (CL), (GS), (JPM) and (SCI)

According to AlpaClone data on for Caxton Associates 21% of their equity portfolio is invested within the Financial sector. The total equity value of for Perry Capital management is 1.08B+, their total number of reported holdings is 574, and over 21% of the market value of this portfolio is represented within the top 10 holdings.

For more information on for Caxton Associates please see the HedgeFundBlogger.com. Hedge Fund Tracker Profile on for Caxton Associates by clicking here.

Related to: Caxton Associates

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Tags:13f analysis, Caxton Associates, Adair Capital Performance Holdings Analysis Team Management, 13f caxton associates,alternative investments

Emerging Hedge Fund Investors & Capital Raising

Richard@RichardCWilson.com (Richard C. Wilson) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:23:30 PDT

Emerging Hedge Fund Investors

Below is a video about how many emerging manager hedge funds outperform the rest of the industry. The theory is that these smaller funds are more nimble, they can invest in smaller cap stocks, and they have a lot at stake and they work to protect the portfolio.

View over 100 videos on hedge funds within our Hedge Fund Video Library.

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Tags: emerging managers, emerging manager hedge funds, hedge fund, hedge funds, alternative investment startups, hedge fund startup capital raising, emerging manager fund of fund

JWM Partners to Close | John Meriweather

Richard@RichardCWilson.com (Richard C. Wilson) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:01:49 PDT

JWM Partners to Close | John Meriweather

JWM Partners is said to be closing its doors, this fund is ran by John Meriweather who was originally part of Long Term Capital Management's team. Here is a video on this same topic:

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Tags: JWM Partners, John Meriweather, Long Term Capital Management, hedge fund, hedge funds, JWM Hedge Funds CLosing, JWM Holdings