The $38.5 billion Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (APFC) has made further enhancements to its unique approach to investment decision making, clarifying procedures relating to risk guidelines in its investment policy. (more…)

Global equity markets significantly underperformed emerging and frontier markets in 2010, evidenced by MSCI Indices end of  year data, with some emerging markets returning as much as 50 per cent and some frontier markest returning 70 per cent for the year. (more…)

The world’s largest investor, the ¥117,643 billion ($1.43 trillion) Government Pension Investment Fund of Japan (GPIF) has reduced its weighting to domestic bonds by more than 1 per cent, moving the money into short term assets. (more…)

Gavin Cassar from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Joseph Gerakos at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, investigate the determinants and effectiveness of methods that hedge funds use to manage portfolio risk. They find that levered funds are more likely to use formal models to evaluate portfolio risk. (more…)

This detailed research looks at cross-sectional and time-series cash flow performance of  a large sample of private equity funds across a range of asset classes, and examines the relationship with the management contracts of those funds. It concludes, among other things, that there is some evidence that funds with lower GP capital commitments outperform. (more…)

Long/short funds with specialised short positions have greater beta convexity and present greater liquidity strain in rebalancing, according to new research by Morgan Stanley. (more…)