Making money with other people's money, the Hedge Fund way Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Martin Wolf, The FT columnist, offers a helpful example from two distinguished academics, Dean Foster at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Peyton Young of Oxford university and the Brookings Institution on Hedge Funds.
They start by asking us to consider a rare event – that the stock market will fall by 20 per cent over the next 12 months, for example. They assume, too, that the options market prices this risk correctly, say at one in 10. An option costs $0.1 and pays out $1.
Now imagine that we set up a hedge fund with $100m from investors on the normal terms of 2 per cent management fees and 20 per cent of the return above a benchmark. We put our $100m in Treasury bills yielding 4 per cent. We also sell 100m covered options on the event [i.e. payout is covered by the value of Treasury bills], which nets us $10m. We put this $10m, too, in Treasury bills, which allows us to sell another 10m options. This nets another $1m. Then we go on holiday.
There is a 90 per cent chance that this bet will pay off in the first year. The fund then grosses $11m on the sale of the options, plus 4 per cent interest on the $110m in Treasury bills, for a handsome 15.4 per cent return [$11m options premium + $4.4m interest]. Our investors are delighted. Assume our benchmark was 4 per cent. We then earn $2m in management fees, plus 20 per cent of $11.4m [$15.4m less $4m assumed min return], which amounts to over $4m gross. Whatever subsequently happens, we need never give this money back.
The chances are nearly 60 per cent that the bad event will not occur over five years. Since the fund is compounding at a rate of 11.4 per cent a year after fees, we will make well over $20m even if no new money is attracted into this apparently stellar enterprise. In the long run, however, the bad event is highly likely to occur. Since we have made huge profits, our investors have paid us handsomely for the near certainty of losing them money.
Now all you need to do is raise $100m and pray the options don't ever payout. But if they do, hey, it's not your capital that will be lost and you can keep your past fees. RESULT!
Labels: Hedge Funds
posted by John Wilson @ 10:15 AM Permanent Link
newsvine
reddit
