

How to Pick a Hedge Fund

Absolute Performance Guidelines
Here is a sound list of primary metrics to use for setting guidelines:
The guideline for size may be a minimum or maximum depending on the investor’s preference. For example, institutional investors often invest such large amounts that a fund or firm must have a minimum size to accommodate a large investment. For other investors, a fund that is too big may face future challenges using the same strategy to match past successes. Such might be the case for hedge funds that invest in the small-cap equity space.
If an investor wants a fund to have a minimum track record of 24 or 36 months, this guideline will eliminate any new funds. However, sometimes a fund manager will leave to start their own fund and although the fund is new, the manager’s performance can be tracked for a much longer time period.
This criterion is very important for smaller investors as many funds have minimums that can make it difficult to diversify properly. The fund’s minimum investment can also give an indication of the types of investors in the fund. Larger minimums may indicate a higher proportion of institutional investors, while low minimums may indicate of a larger number of individual investors.
These terms have implications for liquidity and become very important when an overall portfolio is highly illiquid. Longer lock-up periods are more difficult to incorporate into a portfolio, and redemption periods longer than a month can present some challenges during the portfolio-management process. A guideline may be implemented to eliminate funds that have lockups when a portfolio is already illiquid, while this guideline may be relaxed when a portfolio has adequate liquidity.
