An opinion shared by Warren Buffett. He bet a hedge fund guy $1m that an index fund would beat a portfolio of hedge funds. Buffett won handily: http://longbets.org/362/
I'm a complete layman whose only knowledge of the financial system is derived from podcasts and magazine articles, and hindsight is always 20/20, but wasn't this always an obvious sucker bet?
As I understand it, a hedge fund is supposed to be, well, a hedge. It's not supposed to make more money than the market when the market's doing well. It's supposed to be uncorrelated from the rest of the market, with the hope that it can maintains or even gain value in the event that the rest of the market tanks. An asset class that could reasonably be expected to substantially outperform both a bull market and a bear market isn't a hedge against anything, it's just a strictly superior asset class and we're pretty good at arbitraging those out of existence in relatively short order.
With that in mind, doesn't this basically devolve to a bet that at least a whole decade's worth of economic growth was going to be consumed entirely by a massive recession? That's not wholly unprecedented, admittedly, but it is a lot rarer than I'd be comfortable putting any money on at flat odds.
"hedge fund" is kind of a misnomer these days. They started out as actual hedges, but now refer to basically any fund that makes use of complicated securities and active management.
Yes, it was a sucker bet. The funds Protege picked were actually funds of funds that basically had a .6 correlation to the S&P 500. So Buffett was almost guaranteed to win if the markets went up over 10 years, and lose if they went down. And it's very rare for the market to be down over a 10-year period.
Honestly I have no idea what Protege was thinking.
Probably he was thinking that there was small chance that the hedge funds would outperform the S&P, and in that case, it'd be a hell of a PR move, which he could leverage to get more AUM. From a game-theoretic point of view, it's possible the bet had a positive expected value for him even if he knew he'd likely lose.
I'm not following. Buffett won the bet. The portfolio of hedge funds did worse.
If you're saying the hedge fund managers themselves make money, sure. That's Buffett's exact point: they pocket money, but that money isn't going to the customers, which is why the hedge fund portfolio's rate of return ends up lower than the index fund.
As I understand it, a hedge fund is supposed to be, well, a hedge. It's not supposed to make more money than the market when the market's doing well. It's supposed to be uncorrelated from the rest of the market, with the hope that it can maintains or even gain value in the event that the rest of the market tanks. An asset class that could reasonably be expected to substantially outperform both a bull market and a bear market isn't a hedge against anything, it's just a strictly superior asset class and we're pretty good at arbitraging those out of existence in relatively short order.
With that in mind, doesn't this basically devolve to a bet that at least a whole decade's worth of economic growth was going to be consumed entirely by a massive recession? That's not wholly unprecedented, admittedly, but it is a lot rarer than I'd be comfortable putting any money on at flat odds.
What am I missing?