Are single manager "buy and hold" concentrated funds dead?
Are single manager "buy and hold" concentrated funds dead? Funds that rose in the 2015-2021 period that are nothing more than glorified PAs betting on zero interest rates, tech and easy money, funds that were up 200% in 2020 but down 90% since. Are these so called "super investors" basically done? Who would give these people money? I certainly wouldn't. MM and multi-strat. will feast on these guys.
Agree or disagree? The truth is, any monkey (or squirrel) would have been up 200% in 2020. No skill needed. Any monkey (or squirrel) would have made money, so what are these fund managers' edge other than luck?
If you were really skilled, you would have been up 200% EVERY year, including 2021, 2022, 2023, so on. That's skill.
@Passthrumonster is that you?
The intellectual masturbation on this website really gets absurd sometimes. Alpha, beta, w/e the job is to just provide risk adjusted returns, stop trying to retroactively justify spending 3500 hours scalping pair trades to be up 3% for the year.
We get it, uncorrelated returns, we see the appeal to LP’s. But we are not LP’s, and there’s still billions injected in shops running net exposures taking factor and beta risk. Your 3500 hours to be up 3% on the print isn’t going to appeal to the junior guys at Pershing getting paid a bag to watch Ackman buy up T-bills.
stop with the MM is paradise theme, getting absurdly boring
And Alphabet, with a thesis that looks like it was written by GPT
Yeah, but who cares? Get paid and move on right
There is no fucken skill at all in buying a bunch of tech stocks after doing cursory "Rule of 40" modeling for a couple years out with exponentially increasing assumptions and watching all of these stocks go 5x-10x due to interest rates being at zero. None at all. Anyone can do. A monkey can do (probably better). Why should these SMs get paid hundreds of millions in 2020 for just being lucky? Anyone could have done this.
Not sure why some of these SMs get celebrated as geniuses or "super investors" when they got lucky with interest rate and factor (growth) beta. These guys are down 60-80% since the 2021 peak and absolutely suck. Why LPs would even waste time with these snake oil salesmen and allow them to continue managing funds ("oh trust us, give us another 5 years...") is beyond me. If you can't make money every fucken year, get the fuck out of the industry and go flip burgers.
Sounds like you’re just bitter. I’m not arguing against the skill required, but it begs the question did you make a fortune during this period of time? How many did?
LPs are still investing in these shops and so these shops will continue to pay up their employees to do comparatively less work compared to some cuck at an MM getting baited by P72 Academy to grind for 1000s of hours as a junior to scalp alpha.
complaining about the system is just sad
You bitch so much about SM HF's it's almost comical. Did Bill Ackman fuck your wife or something? Or are you just regretting your career choices? Live and let live, jesus christ.
I chatted with a value manager recently about this and his response was 'You have to realize the last cycle was crushing for value SM cuz of the underperformance of value factor.' I was thinking, you just proved your returns were beta
there’s a post everyday about this. Short answer: yes SM/tiger cub is dead and MM will continue to take share. Secular not cyclical. Obviously as there’s more launches that erodes MM edge but doesn’t strengthen SM edge if that makes sense
What fucken edge do most SMs have? The results speak volumes - most, the vast majority of SMs, are shit and are run for the egos of the PMs not to maximize returns for the LPs.
Yes ur right they have no “real” / “hard” edge (ie they have no informational or analytical edge if we’re being real), but SOME of them (the one’s that have seen a cycle or 2 + well respected) have some duration which id consider more of a soft edge (yet still a real edge), yet one that’s increasingly of less importance imo
No it’s not dead
Great concentrated/directional funds exist
There are just less of them than people thought there were in recent years
LPs have become more skeptical and better at breaking down attribution, so yes fees on beta are compressing somewhat and that capital pool is shrinking, cause like tech it overshot to the moon and capital was allocated to a lot of people who weren’t actually adding alpha
But it’s not dead, that’s silly
Far from dead
The good ones are much harder to get into than the best MMs
The pod shops generate alpha, but most folks working at pod shops are beta people and def beta-minded.
Agree with the comment above about how the MM hype it's gotten ridiculous.
I work in credit and it's unbearable. MM analysts come conference meetings asking the most ridiculously complex (and useless) question to then go back to the office and put on the most basic RV trade on the most liquid IG name. Spare me.
I wasn't gonna touch this thread but oh well... way to trivialize everything.
No they aren't dead. Yes LPs will continue to demand more and the SMs not up to the task will go away. But LPs still want different things from different funds. There are things that SMs can do that MMs can't do though, and if they are good they will take advantage of that competitive edge. I think we will probably see more adoption of the risk models that MM use at SMs, who will be ever more aware of what their return stream is / what product they are offering. So if anything SMs will "think" more like MMs in some aspects, but if they are smart they won't go chasing the MMs game and will stay in their own lane. Industries evolve, market paradigms evolve, competition evolves - and the whole fee pressure "active management" argument that this resembles has been around forever.
Come back to this thread in two years and lets see how dead the SMs are... From what I have heard, performance has been much less than stellar outside of a few of the large MM players. Another stat that gets thrown around is that the top 10% of PMs generate all the returns in that space. Well guess what, I'm willing to bet that the top SMs generate most of the great returns as well. Doesn't mean the whole segment is dead though.
First rational comment on the thread
Quod iure cupiditate vel quas quas nobis perferendis sit. Nesciunt ad est aperiam in est doloribus sapiente. Sunt nostrum dignissimos voluptate sint et commodi.
Et iusto fugiat beatae autem cupiditate dolores amet. Similique et ex et aliquid expedita quod. Quae nulla dolorem rerum laborum.
Cupiditate culpa pariatur iure. Laborum ea mollitia ex delectus animi dolorum.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...