CFA Book 4 Flashcards
alt investments | 6 types
Traditional:
- real estate (including infrastructure funds)
- private equity (including buyout funds)
- commodities Modern:
- hedge funds
- managed futures
- distressed securities
alt investments | 3 roles AI can play in portfolio
- exposure to risk factors and return unavailable with stocks and bonds: real estate, long commodities
- exposure to special strats and manager skill: hedge funds, managed futures
- combo of 1 & 2: PE and distressed securities
alt investments | common features across alt investments
- low liquidity
- good diversification (low corr)
- due diligence costs
- difficult performance evaluation
alt investments | evaluation process
Assess:
- plausibility of market opportunity
- investment process / manager edge
- organization
- people
- investment terms and structure
- service providers
- review documents
- write up review results
alt investments | issues for private wealth clients
- taxes
- suitability (eg. time horizon)
- communication: many investors not sophisticated
- decision risk: emotionally abandoning a strategy at the point of maximum loss
- concentrated positions (rem: large taxable gains)
alt investment | real estate: direct and indirect investment
- direct: direct ownership of real estate; direct management of assets
- indirect: well defined middle group managing assets
alt investment | real estate: indirect investments
- companies that manage and develop real estate
- REITs: publicaly traded like stock, liquid
- CREFs: for wealth investors
- Separately managed accts: similar to CREFs
- Infrastructure funds: buy public infrastructure; stable, low return
alt investment | real estate: pros & cons
pros:
1. low corr w stocks and bonds
2. low volatility
3. inflation hedge
cons:
1. high information and trans costs
2. tax law changes
3. high op costs
4. can’t subdivide invesment
5. each asset has idiosyncratic risk
alt investment | private equity: traits
- aka PE
- ownership interest in non-public company
- limited to the wealthy or institutions
- investment: pref shares, VC, buyout funds
alt investment | private equity: 2 main types
- venture capital: startups
◎ high risk - buyout funds: buy existing public companies from shareholders
◎ middle market buyout fund: buy spin-offs
◎ mega-cap: buy whole pubic companies
◎ infrastructure: buy public infrastructure (roads, airports)
◎ less risk than VC
alt investment | private equity: return / risks
return:
1. restructure mng and ops
2. buy company for less than intrinsic
3. leverage or restructure existing debt
risk:
1. high risk, many failures
2. low liquidity
alt investment | private equity: exit from investment
- IPO
- private placement
- dividend recapitalization: company exchanges equity for debt in cap structure >> investors extract cash from company, retain ownership
alt investments | commodities: direct vs indirect
- direct: direct purchase of commodity or derivatives
- indirect: invest in business associated with commodities
- indirect has shown poor tracking with commodity prices
- most common is direct with derivatives
alt investments | commodities: pros & cons
pros:
1. uncorr with stocks and bonds
2. inflation hedge
3. fairly liquid
• business cycle sensitivity is also trait (???)
alt investments | hedge funds: traits
- funds that pool money to take non-systemic risk
- target absolute return uncorr to mkt
- initially, long-short funds
- unreg
- high fees
- “exploit arbitrage opportunities”
alt investments | hedge funds: 9 types
- equity market neutral
- convertible arbitrage
- fixed-income arbitrage
- distressed securities
- merger arbitragge
- hedged equity
- global macro
- emerging markets
- fund of funds (FOF)
alt investments | managed future funds: traits
- similar to hedge fund: structure, 2/20
- invests only derivatives
- vehicles are private commodity pools, CTAs (SMA’s), public commodity futures funds
- risk: equity > futures fund > bonds
- negative, low corr with equities, positive, low corr w bonds
alt investments | managed future funds vs hedge funds
- only derivatives (MMF) vs any asset, spot and futures (HF)
- macro (MMF) vs micro (HF)
alt investments | managed future funds: strats
- systematic trading strats
◎ trend following rules
◎ contrarian rules (rare) - discretionary
- focus on mkt (eg. financial or currency or diversified)
alt investment | real estate
- residences, commerical, raw land and associated industries
- low liquidity
- high diversification
alt investment | commodity investments
agri products, oil, metals
alt investments | distressed funds
- debt or equity
- hedge fund (more liquid) or PE (less liquid)
alt investments | real estate: benchmarks
• direct: NCREIF index
◎ value weighted
◎ annual appraisal >> downward vol bias
• indirect: NAREIT index
◎ cap-weighted
◎ live, up-to-date
• downward bias in vol, risk
• good diversification vs equity, bonds (REITs somewhat less so)
alt investments | PE: benchmarks
- Cambridge Assoc., Thompson Venture Economics, custom
- few price points >> appraisal >> downward vol bias
- vintage year corr >> comparisons by year
alt investments | commodities: benchmarks
- DJ-UBS Commodity Index, SP Commodity Index
- based on futures
- investible
- weights: world productions, relative worldwide importance
- arithmetic or geometric avging
alt investments | managed futures: benchmarks
• MLMI (mechanical, trend strat), CTA index (peer group mng’ed)
◎ dollar weighted (CTA$) or equal weighted (CTAEQ)
alt investments | distressed funds: benchmarks
- considered a sub-group of hedge funds
- benchmark similar to long-only hedge fund benchmark
alt investments | hedge funds: benchmarks
• hedge funds are very heterogeneous >> varied benchmarks
• benchmark vary by:
◎ selection criteria (AUM, track record length, investment restrictions)
◎ style of fund
◎ weighting
◎ rebalancing rules
◎ investability
• eg.: DJ, SP (both equally weighted and list funds)
alt investments | hedge funds: cons
- past data relevance
- popularity bias
- survivorship bias (big issue)
- stale price bias (small issue)
- backfill or inclusion bias
commodity futures | 4 cash and carry calculation complications
- not storable
- significant storage costs
- seasonal supply/demand price fluctuations
- ability to lease
commodity futures | forward price with lease rate
F = S * e ^ (Rf - LR)T
LR = lease rate
T = term in years
• reduces forward price
• if Rf > LR >> contango; if Rf < LR >> backwardation
commodity futures | forward price with storage costs
• F = S * e ^ (Rf * T) + lambda(0,T)
• if paid continuously and proportional to commodity:
◎ F = S * e ^ (Rf + lambda)T
lambda(0,T) = future value of storage from time 0 to T
futures | general logic
think of:
starting from 0
selling the future forward
borrowing money (and paying interest)
buying and holding the underlying to complete the hedge
commodity futures | forward price with convenience yield
S * e ^ (Rf * T) >= F >= S * e ^ (Rf - c)T
c = convenience yld
• range because c only applies if business reason to own
• if storage costs, then lease rate = convenience yld - storage costs
commodity futures | PV of gold production
PV = sum(X * (Fo,i - Ci) * e (-Rf * ti))
X = oz of gold produced in period i
C = cost of production in period i
• PV = amount produced * price that you can look in with future * discount to PV
commodity futures | commodity spread arbitrage
- buy futures of input, sell futures of output (or vice versa)
- done in ratio of inputs to outputs
- eg.: crush spread, crack spread
futures | basis
basis = F - S
• basis risk: basis may vary over the life of the contract
• larger risk with commodities vs financials
• risk eg. timing, storage, transportation, grade
futures | cross hedging
hedging one asset with a similar but not the same asset
futures | strip hedge vs stack hedge
- strip hedge: buying multiple futures that expire over a period of time to hedge a flow of assets
- when a strip hedge is not possible due to illiquid farther out futures >> stack hedge: buying more near term futures and then rolling them as they come due to hedge the farther out risk
futures | storage costs
appears that storage costs are paid at the end of each period >> one less interest multiplication
risk management | risk reduction
recognizing, reducing, eliminating, avoiding unnecessary risk (as opposed to necessary risk where investment mng’s have information or other advantage
risk management | risk management process
- top mng sets policies and procedures
- identifying risks: financial and non-financial; building investment databases to catalog
- risk tolerance for each type of risk
- measuring current risk
- adjust risk levels:
◎ execute transactions to adjust risk (often derivatives)
◎ ID most appropriate transaction
◎ consider trans cost
◎ exexcute transaction
• always ongoing; adjusting risk and risk models
risk management | risk governance
• part of corp gov system
• centralized vs decentralized
• methodologies
• needed resources
• good system:
◎ transparent
◎ clear accountability
◎ cost efficient
◎ effeective
risk management | centralized vs decentralized
• decentralized risk gov system puts control in the hands of those closest to the risk creation
• centralized (aka enterprise risk management ERM) system:
◎ one central unit
◎ view of risk across entire company
◎ view of cross impact of diff risks
◎ close to senior mng, who are ultimately responsible for risk and risk policy
◎ economies of scale
• data collection/storage must always be centralized to be tech efficient
risk management | back office vs front office
• the risk reporting side (back office) must be independent from the risk taking side (front office)
risk management | traits of effective systems
- identify every risk factor exposure for company
- quantify risk factor
- create firm-wide aggregate of every risk factor (VAR is key)
- ID how each risk factor affects firm-wide risk (advantage of VAR)
- systematically report risk and assign capital and risk to each business unit
- monitor capital and risk limits
risk management | 3 financial risks
- market risk: prices and rates; often largest risk
- credit risk: counter-party/debtor failure to pay; often second largest risk
- liquidity risk: inability to liquidate at current fail value; bid-ask width and avg trading volume are indicators of liquidity
risk managment | 7 + 3 non-financial risks
- operational: eg.: computer or human failure, weather, etc
- settlement risk: one side pays, other defaults; ‘netting’ and ‘continuously linked settlements’ reduce risk
- model risk: problems with a financial or risk model
- sovereign risk: unwillingness to pay (financial is inability to pay)
- regulatory: interpretation of or change in a regulation
- tax, accounting, legal, contract risk: unclear or change in reg or law
- political
RM | sharpe ratio
- measures excess return per until of risk
- SR = (Rp - Rf) / Std Dev(Rp)
- con: assumes normal dist
RM | risk-adjusted return on invested capital
- aka RAROC • Rp / VAR
- % or $
RM | return over maximum drawdown
- aka RoMAD
- RoMAD = avg Rp / max drawdown; taken over multiple time periods (eg. months in year)
- drawdown = within a single time period, highest value - lowest value
- max drawdown = the greatest drawdown over multiple periods
RM | sortino ratio
- sortino = Rp - MAR / downside deviation
- MAR = minimum acceptable return on portfolio
- downside deviation = std dev of returns below MAR
- doesn’t penalize for right tail returns
RM | 4 risk allocation methods for setting capital limits
- nominal position limits
◎ can be subverted using multiple securities with similar risk - VAR based position limits
◎ overestimates because does not consider corr - maximum loss limit
- internal capital requirements and regulatory capital requirements
RM | VAR vs stress tests
VAR does not capture ununsual events that stress tests do