Hedge Funds for the Advanced Financial Professional

Thursday, September 10

09.00 - 09.15 Welcome and Introduction

09.15 - 12.00 The Hedge Fund Industry and Its Players

• The Evolution of Hedge Funds
• Hedge Funds vs. Mutual Funds
• Hedge Funds vs. other Alternative Investments
• Hedge Funds and the Financial System
• Case Studies: Recent Hedge Fund Failures

Building and Managing a Hedge Fund

• Setting Up the Fund
• Regulatory and Tax Issues
• The Hedge Fund Managers Toolkit
  • Short-selling
  • Leverage
  • Derivatives
• The Role of the Prime Broker
• Possible Conflicts of Interest in Managing Hedge Funds
• Real Life Case Studies

12.00 - 13.00 Lunch

13.00 - 16.30 Equity Strategies

• Equity Market Neutral Strategies
  • Pairs trading
  • Fundamental arbitrage
  • Statistical arbitrage
  • “Double Alpha”
• Opportunistic Long-Short Strategies
• Dedicated Short Bias
• Using Futures in Market Neutral Investing
  • Porting Alpha
  • Equitizing a market neutral strategy
• Convertible Arbitrage
  • Delta-hedging the equity exposure
  • Hedging the credit risk
• Case Studies
• Exercises

Friday, September 11

09.00 - 09.15 Brief recap

09.15 - 12.00 Relative Value and Directional Investing

• Fixed Income Arbitrage
  • On-the run/Off-the-run arbitrage
  • Yield curve arbitrage
  • Mortgage arbitrage
  • High yield/CBO arbitrage
• Duration and Multi-Factor Bets
• Global Macro Strategies
• Futures Funds/CTA’s
• Event-Driven Strategies
  • Merger arbitrage
  • Distressed debt
• Capital Structure Arbitrage
  • Arbitraging between debt and equity investments
• Emerging Markets
• Exercises

12.00 - 13.00 Lunch

13.00 - 16.00 Multi-Strategy Funds, Fund-of-Funds and Investable Indexes

• Advantages of Investing through Multi-Strategy Funds
• Fund-of-Funds and the Way they Operate
• Investing in Hedge Fund Linked Bonds
• Investing in Investable Indexes

Managing a Portfolio of Hedge Funds

• Risk-Return Profiling of Hedge Fund Investments
• The Portfolio Managers Checklist for Investing in Hedge Funds
• Constructing the Optimal Portfolio
• Measuring and Managing “Tail” Risks and Other Risk
• Performance Measurement
  • What is the relevant measure of performance?
  • How is tail risk incorporated?
• Exercises

Evaluation and Termination of the Seminar