09/01/2005
Fine art investment funds may be for unwary aficionados or those with more money than sense (or some combination of the two), but how about funds of fine art investment hedge funds? ABN Amro, through its Singapore office, is reportedly assembling a fund of funds that will invest in at least five established art funds. Would such an investment be able to tame the immense liquidity and market risks faced by individual portfolios, like the London-based Fine Art Fund, launched in February 2003?
Private equity firms are barring hedge funds from participating in some European buyouts because they do not trust the hedge funds to take a long-term view if an economic downturn occurs. One of the biggest LBO firms has told its preferred lenders not to sell its loans to hedge funds, according to Reuters. Are the LBO firms in which I invest likely to follow suit? Should they? What does this mean for the leveraged loan market?
Skyrocketing volumes of computer-driven stock trading have swamped equity exchanges as brokers and investment managers have sought to reduce their costs and exploit tiny arbitrage opportunities by automating the trading of huge blocks of equities at lightning speed. But these programs trade liquid, large-cap stocks, meaning small and microcap stocks are getting less and less attention. If this trend continues, will small- and micro-cap stocks suffer, or will it open investment opportunities in those sectors?
Hedge fund redemptions in August could push credit-based funds badly weakened by the credit crisis this spring (in the wake of the General Motors and Ford Motor Co. downgrades) over the edge and force them to close. Are any of my funds in jeopardy? If I ask to redeem my investments, will the fund have the necessary liquidity to do so?
Oil prices will crash as global growth slows, according to an economist at Morgan Stanley—one of the world’s biggest energy derivatives trading firms. However, the firm’s only serious rival in the energy derivatives world, Goldman Sachs, is predicting a super-spike in oil prices to more than $100. If experts disagree to this extent, how should I position my own investments in energy or energy dependent companies?
Private equity real estate firms are becoming more
popular as investors seek asset classes that are not strongly correlated with
the equities markets and ones in which competition for assets is less cutthroat.
PERE firms seek to renovate properties or structure transactions in such a way
to obtain 20-plus percent returns, rather than more typical 10 to 20 percent
returns available from normal real estate vehicles. Should I consider this asset
class?
The “No” votes on the EU constitution have spurred a great deal of
private investor interest in principal-protected currency basket products, which
help diversify currency exposures and profit from the euro’s (and the dollar’s)
tribulations. Would this type of investment be useful to me in light of my own
exposures to the euro and the dollar?
Strong demand from Chinese
manufacturers pushed the price of copper to a record high of $3,340 per ton in
June. Supply constraints may support this price level for some time. Should I
have some exposure to copper, directly, or to copper mining companies in my
portfolio?
BLIPS, FLIPs and OPIS were abusive tax shelters peddled to
affluent clients by KPMG in the 1990s, according to the Justice Department. As
the accounting giant negotiates frantically to avoid a firm-ending Andersonian
indictment, its clients are scouring their old returns for evidence of offending
transactions. Do I have any?
, after a U.S. short-seller won the right to sue a
speech recognition software developer that issued upbeat financial statements
that masked a deteriorating business picture. What does this mean for my
business? For the firms in which I invest?