All About Alpha – Innovation, or the art of creating something fresh and insightful, reinventing something that takes a product or idea forward to the next level, in some form. In reality, the term innovation is pretty old; first used in modern language in the mid-1500s, it derives from the Latin innovatio, the noun of action from innovare, or “to renew or change.”
If anyone can lay claim to innovation in the capital markets, certainly it should be the hedge fund industry. So this is why the most recent annual survey of institutional investment managers by CREATE-Research entitled Investment Innovations: Raising the Bar, really has us shaking our heads a bit, even if we allow for our somewhat natural bias.
The good news is this year’s report, which surveyed both asset managers and pension funds representing combined assets under management of around US$29 trillion, doesn’t call into question whether or not actually alpha exists, as it did last year.
