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Lessons (not) learned: our analysis shows Ivies are at pre-GFC levels of risk

It’s been a wild rollercoaster ride these days for Bitcoin investors. The cryptocurrency hit an all-time high of $64k in April only to plummet nearly 50% a month later. Last year, as the entire world shut down access to mountain peaks and surfing spots, people started to look for stay-at-home ways to supply their adrenaline fix – and speculative trading fit the bill.

Following up on our most recent article, “Infinity Q: Too Much Alpha,” Infinity Q also managed a hedge fund product, Infinity Q Volatility Alpha, which exclusively employed volatility strategies. Using known sub-strategies as regression factors for a multi-strategy product can prove very useful in identifying the source of both skill and risk in a more complex product.

The suspension of redemptions and planned liquidation of the Infinity Q Diversified Alpha fund (IQDNX, IQDAX) – a $1.8 billion hedge fund-like multi-strategy liquid alternatives mutual fund that was started by investment staff from the family office of a private equity titan – has sent shockwaves through the fund management industry. Using MPI’s quantitative surveillance framework we discover a slew of red flags that could have alerted the fund’s investors.

In 2019, we presented a return-based analysis framework that can be used to analyze complex fixed income funds such as PIMCO Income fund. In this updated blog, we apply a similar methodology to the fund as we did previously to evaluate the performance of the fund during the COVID market distress.

For the second straight year, Brown outperformed all other Ivy endowments by a large margin. Our research team, using MPI Stylus Pro to dissect the endowment annual returns, provides a plausible explanation of the endowment’s spectacular results.

We take a quick look at Ivy schools’ endowments’ performance results both for the 2020 fiscal year and also long-term for 10-year periods.

The quantitative research and approach demonstrated in this white paper, helps to provide a useful and pragmatic framework for investment practitioners to screen for liquidity risks when selecting new fixed-income products, as well as when conducting ongoing monitoring of their current bond funds.

How have risk parity funds actually acted (or reacted) during the current crisis? We use our Stylus Pro system to estimate changes in allocations and leverage levels.

We use our tools and proprietary dynamic factor model to analyze Renaissance RIEF to gain insight into the results in the first quarter of 2020.