Both the direct hedge fund industry and the fund-of-fund industry have been under significant scrutiny in recent weeks and months. The Bernard Madoff scandal was clearly the most high profile event that has drawn this negative attention. In addition, David Swensen, the highly regarded Yale endowment fund manager recently expressed a harsh view of the [...]

Global financial markets are essentially mechanisms for buying, selling and transferring risks. When we break these risks all down to their roots, I would argue that there really exist only four actual fundamental risks that are being bought, sold and otherwise transferred. They are:

Nothing aggravates and annoys me quite as much as journalists, investors, or anyone else for that matter, taking a short term view of things and predicting catastrophe (oh, and the British of course). The world (outside of Britain that is) is a pretty elastic and adaptive place. Things happen for a reason, people adapt and [...]