Volume 9, No. 1, First Quarter 2011

Practitioner’s Digest • Vol. 9, No. 1

The “Practitioners Digest” emphasizes the practical significance of manuscripts featured in the “Insights” and “Articles” sections of the journal. Readers who are interested in extracting the practical value of an article, or who are simply looking for a summary, may look to this section.

Decentralized Downside Risk Management

by: Andrea Reed, Cristian Tiu and Uzi Yoeli

The process of risk management for institutional investors faces two challenges. First, since most institutions are decentralized in contrast to being direct investors in assets, it is difficult to separate the risks of the assets in the portfolio from the risks generated by the investment decisions by fund management. To address this issue, we propose a risk measurement methodology which calculates the risk contributions of individual securities and investment decisions simultaneously. This decomposition is applicable to any decentralized investor as long as its relevant risk measurement statistic can be additively decomposed. Second, statistics used to measure risk may not coincide with institution-specific investment risks, in the sense that the utility employed in asset allocation may be unrelated to the risk measure utilized. For example, an institution may do mean-variance asset allocation, but inconsistently measure the risk of the portfolio using Value at Risk. We apply this methodology to a particular type of decentralized investor, specifically, endowment funds where the relevant risk statistic is the downside risk of returns relative to actual payout levels, plus inflation. We show how downside risk can be decomposed and apply our simultaneous downside risk decomposition empirically on a sample of U.S. endowment funds. We find that an endowment's asset allocation to U.S. Equity, consistent with having the largest weight in the average endowment portfolio, generates almost half of the total endowment returns but almost 100% of the total portfolio downside risk. We further find that tactical allocations (or timing) have economically small contributions to both returns and risk. Finally, we find that the allocations to U.S. Fixed Income and to Hedge Funds as well as active investment decisions (except for tactical) contribute positively to returns, while reducing portfolio downside risk.

The Supply and Demand of Alpha

by: Harry Markowitz, Robert Snigaroff and David Wroblewski

This paper analyzes the supply and demand for alpha by institutional investors and the money managers who serve them. A large database of products offered by such managers is used to estimate how the demand for such products increases as a function of achieved excess returns and how the ability to produce such excess returns declines with increased AUM (Assets Under Management). Static and dynamic (simulation) analyses are used to explore some implications of these estimates.

The National Transportation Safety Board: A Model for Systemic Risk Management

by: Eric Fielding, Andrew W. Lo and Jian Helen Yang

We propose the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) as a model organization for addressing systemic risk in industries and contexts other than transportation. When adopted by regulatory agencies and the transportation industry, the safety recommendations of the NTSB have been remarkably effective in reducing the number of fatalities in various modes of transportation since the NTSB's inception in 1967 as an independent agency. The NTSB has no regulatory authority and is solely focused on conducting forensic investigations of transportation accidents and proposing safety recommendations. With only 400 full-time employees, the NTSB has a much larger network of experts drawn from other government agencies and the private sector who are on call to assist in accident investigations on an as-needed basis. By allowing the participation in its investigations of all interested parties who can provide technical assistance to the investigations, the NTSB produces definitive analyses of even the most complex accidents and provides actionable measures for reducing the chances of future accidents. It is possible to create more efficient and effective systemic-risk management processes in many other industries, including financial services, by studying the organizational structure and functions of the NTSB.

Has Hedge Fund Alpha Disappeared?

by: Manuel Ammann, Otto Huber and Markus Schmid

This paper investigates the alpha generation of the hedge fund industry based on a recent sample compiled from the Lipper/TASS database covering the time period from January 1994 to September 2008. We find a positive average hedge fund alpha in the cross-section for the majority of strategies and a positive and significant alpha for roughly half of all funds. Moreover, the alpha of three-quarter of the strategy indices is positive and significant in the time series. A comparison of a factor model in which the risk factors are selected based on a stepwise regression approach and the widely used factor model proposed by Fung and Hsieh (2004) reveals that the estimated alpha is robust with respect to the choice of the factor model. In contrast to prior research, we find no evidence of a decreasing hedge fund alpha over time. Moreover, based on our sample, we cannot confirm prior evidence pointing to capacity constraints in the hedge fund industry.

Closet Indexing

by: Jack L. Treynor

“Case Studies” presents a case pertinent to contemporary issues and events in investment management. Insightful and provocative questions are posed at the end of each case to challenge the reader. Each case is an invitation to the critical thinking and pragmatic problem solving that are so fundamental to the practice of investment management.

The Big Short-Inside The Doomsday Machine

by: Michael Lewis • reviewed by: Javier Estrada

“Book Reviews” identifies important, and often popular, new books from a wide range of investment topics. Beyond providing a summary and review of the content and style of the books, “Book Reviews” seeks to contribute to a conscious, critical, and informed approach to investment literature.