Customer Reviews

Handbook of Alternative Assets (Wiley Desktop Editions)

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I had to buy this for the CAIA exam. In reading it, I find on average one typo a page. I have found at least one chart misreferenced in the text. It is very distracting. Given that Mr. Anson is on the Curriculum Committee for the exam, it is not surprising that his text is on the list of required readings. Perhaps it is all that is out there. But Shame on Wiley for publishing it in the rough draft that it seems to be.

I have to agree with the woman from SC below -- this book is horribly edited. The typos are everywhere.

Also, some of the statements are questionable generalizations - e.g. p.100, Anson is quoting a hedge fund document:

Anson:
"Consider the following language from a hedge fund disclosure document.

'The fund's objective is to make investments in public securities that generate a long term return in excess of that generated by the overall US equity market...'

...[T]he manager identifies that it invests in the US public equity market."

In fact, the sentence quoted from the hedge fund document does not state what Anson says, only that the return should exceed the overall US equity market, long-term, by investing in public securities, not necessarily US public equities.

There are also questionable statements about portfolio theory: p.21 "Diversification, [comma? sic] is a way to minimize the risk of underperformance, but, at the same time, it minimizes the probability of outperformance."
In fact, diversification's benefit can be divorced from any benchmark, and the conclusion that a reader might draw from this (that concentrated managers will outperform more diversified ones with regularity, or are somehow more attractive) is misleading. Concentrated managers will have higher variance. Diversification decreases the expected variance around the expected mean return -- it does not necessarily lower the expected return (if you diversify with higher returning investments, your expected return can go up while your expected variance can come down, even if the new investments are more volatile that the old), or the "probability of outperformance", which is not an output of portfolio theory.
A more accurate statement in this context would be that, "As your portfolio converges to the benchmark portfolio, your returns will converge to the benchmark return."

Here's one more: p. 102
"Generally, process risk is not a risk that investors wish to bear. Nor is it a risk for which they expect to be compensated. How would an investor go about pricing the process risk of a hedge fund manager? It can't be quantified, and it can't be calibrated. There is no way to tell whether an institutional investor is being properly compensated for this risk."
The second sentence here answers the fifth sentence? Since process risk is entirely diversifiable, the proper compensation (risk premium) for this risk is simply zero.

There are lots of these. It's just too broad, too sweeping in it's generalizations, which lead to more questions.

The content of the book is good and useful. However please do not upgrade to amazon online accesss. I upgraded and every other day you cannot acccess the entire book online.You can only browse first 8 pages and then when you call amazon customer service they would temporarily resolve the issue only to have the same issue reoccur again.

Nice overview of alternative asset classes. One reference of many we use for research, cross-reference, marketing and new associate education.

This book is part of the CAIA exam reading and well worth it. It clearly explains what are some of the strategies put to work by the Hedge Fund managers. Very clearly articulates the similarities and differences between all the 10 possible Hedge Fund strategies (ex: equity long/short, market neutral, convertable arbitrage)

This is the best book on Hedge Funds for someone looking for an overview of the industry.

This book must have been quite useful for my friend who used it to prepare for the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) exam. He passed the two exams all on his first attempt.

A pleasant surprise - this book is very readable, containing both wisdom and practical information. Has both big picture macro level thinking and specifics about asset classes.

I purchased the Book of Alternative Assets in order to study for the CAIA Level 1 exam. The book is a great reference and starter to all kinds of alternative assets. It gives the reader a good overall view of the different tools and strategies of alternative investing. It's a fairly qualitative approach and includes diagrams to aid in the delivery of concepts.

The book covers hedge funds, commodities and managed futures, private equity, credit derivatives, and corporate governance.

The hedge fund approach mainly covers the regulatory, risk, and investor perspectives. For example, if you were a foundation or endowment, how would you assess a hedge fund or fund of funds?

The commodities and managed futures, private equity, and credit derivative sections begin with fairly elementary concepts and build from there to allow the reader to feel comfortable enough to talk about them with industry professionals and understand where the market is going with each field.

There are the occasional misspelled words, so it could be edited a little bit better, but it's not too much of a distraction.

Even though it's about 700 pages, it reads quickly. Overall, it's a solid book and an easy read for the CAIA curriculum.