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| | Mitch Julis offered blunt advice.
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One year ago
Hedge fund executives from some of the top firms in the business spoke their minds at the 2011 Absolute Return Symposium.
"Hedge funds really haven't done what they were supposed to do this year," said Emmanuel Roman, COO of Man Group, the London-based investment manager with $64.5 billion in assets, which was then on its way to a 6.83% annual loss in its Man AHL Diversified managed futures fund (Man has done better this year; performance data here).
Mitch Julius, co-chief executive of $19.1 billion Canyon Partners, told investors to heed the complexity of the world and be humble about their ability to predict the unpredictable. "Masters of the universe? It's all crap," he said.
Other prescient words came from Mark van der Zwan, executive director and portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners, who noted that investors were sacrificing returns by steering clear of strategies they may consider illiquid or complex. One such strategy, structured credit, has been the best-performing in the entire hedge fund world this year; the Absolute Return Mortgage Backed Securities Index is up nearly 10%.
This year's Absolute Return Symposium, held just three days after Hurricane Sandy hit New York, brought together hundreds of industry leaders for keynote speeches by TPG-Axon founder Dinakar Singh, Metacapital Management head Deepak Narula, and a slew of panels featuring hedge fund luminaries. For complete coverage from the two-day event (program here), please see the following: