August 2024
Alan Dunne spoke with John Jackson, Global Head of Hedge Fund Research at Mercer, about selecting top hedge fund talent and building hedge fund portfolios.
They discussed the much improved environment for hedge funds in recent years, the role of hedge funds in a diversified portfolio and how John and the team think about strategy allocation and identifying top hedge fund talent.
Some of the more interesting points from the conversation included:
· Why Mercer has tended not to have large allocations to large multi-pod multi-strategy funds despite their growing scale and popularity
· Why it makes sense to start with manager selection rather than populating “buckets” when building a hedge fund portfolio
· Why John and his team often prefer hedge funds with broader mandates that can be adaptable and flexible rather than specialists
· Why Mercer spend a significant amount of time and resources focused on emerging managers even as it has become more challenging for new managers to reach scale
· Why John believes in the importance of holding a diversified set of diversifying strategies (including discretionary macro, systematic macro and tail risk) for greater portfolio robustness
Commentaires