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There's a whole world of investments you and I don't have access to because we're a few $B short. As a perk some shops allow employees some access to their fund

by ng12 10y ago

There's a whole world of investments you and I don't have access to because we're a few $B short. As a perk some shops allow employees some access to their funds, like a parallel to RSUs or equity.

acchow 10y ago
Which of these exclusive funds beats BRK-A?
- ng12 10y ago
  Famously Renaissance has an employee-only fund that's provided insane returns since the early 90's [1]. It's kind of a ridiculous claim you're making -- that the entire trillion dollar industry is struggling to beat just sitting on the S&P. Capitalism doesn't work that way. [1]. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-21/how-renaissance-s-medallion-fund-became-finance-s-blackest-box https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-21/how-renai...
  - jjeaff 10y ago
    It is a trillion dollar industry but not for beating the market. It's for the fees they charge on assets under management.
nugget 10y ago
Calling it "a whole world of investments" is a little extreme. Access to almost all asset classes is available for even the smallest of investors. Absent a mysterious Renaissance-like trading algorithm that magically prints out-performance, diversification is the only free lunch, and it's cheap and easy to massively diversify these days.
- ng12 10y ago
  I mean there are lots of funds/managers you can only invest with if you have a few hundred million to play with. Sure, they invest in the same asset classes you do except in theory they do it way better.
  - jorvi 10y ago
    Which doesn't matter because over the long run almost no funds beat the market average.
    - ng12 10y ago
      I don't understand why people parrot this sentiment all the time. Lots of crappy startups hand out worthless equity -- would you say "most tech stocks aren't worth anything"? Sure there are bad investment firms out there and those don't tend to last very long. There are many firms which handily beat the market, they wouldn't be around if they didn't.
      - jacques_chester 10y ago
        > would you say "most tech stocks aren't worth anything"? On the base rate for tech: very little. On the base rate for any business: a little. https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/Business-Survival.pdf https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/Business-Survival.pd...
      - jjeaff 10y ago
        You would think so, but taking into account fees, there are actually ZERO funds that beat the market over a 30 year period. You can research this on morningstar. Maybe there are some super secret private funds out there that beat the market over the long period (Madoff's fund was one of them). So ya, you would think they wouldn't stay in business, but marketing and complexity is powerful. Their best trick is to hold a ton of funds in their portfolio then show you the ones that have had a good run the last 10 years. Then of course a different ten in a few years. Hold enough assets in enough configurations and of course you will have some winners over shorter periods of time. But good luck guessing which ones.
        vostok 10y ago
        I wasn't aware that Morningstar had publicly available hedge fund performance data. What do they show for Renaissance's Medallion Fund over the last 29 years?

by ng12 10y ago

There's a whole world of investments you and I don't have access to because we're a few $B short. As a perk some shops allow employees some access to their funds, like a parallel to RSUs or equity.

acchow 10y ago

Which of these exclusive funds beats BRK-A?

ng12 10y ago
Famously Renaissance has an employee-only fund that's provided insane returns since the early 90's [1]. It's kind of a ridiculous claim you're making -- that the entire trillion dollar industry is struggling to beat just sitting on the S&P. Capitalism doesn't work that way. [1]. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-21/how-renaissance-s-medallion-fund-became-finance-s-blackest-box https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-21/how-renai...
- jjeaff 10y ago
  It is a trillion dollar industry but not for beating the market. It's for the fees they charge on assets under management.

nugget 10y ago

Calling it "a whole world of investments" is a little extreme. Access to almost all asset classes is available for even the smallest of investors. Absent a mysterious Renaissance-like trading algorithm that magically prints out-performance, diversification is the only free lunch, and it's cheap and easy to massively diversify these days.

ng12 10y ago
I mean there are lots of funds/managers you can only invest with if you have a few hundred million to play with. Sure, they invest in the same asset classes you do except in theory they do it way better.
- jorvi 10y ago
  Which doesn't matter because over the long run almost no funds beat the market average.
  - ng12 10y ago
    I don't understand why people parrot this sentiment all the time. Lots of crappy startups hand out worthless equity -- would you say "most tech stocks aren't worth anything"? Sure there are bad investment firms out there and those don't tend to last very long. There are many firms which handily beat the market, they wouldn't be around if they didn't.
    - jacques_chester 10y ago
      > would you say "most tech stocks aren't worth anything"? On the base rate for tech: very little. On the base rate for any business: a little. https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/Business-Survival.pdf https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/Business-Survival.pd...
    - jjeaff 10y ago
      You would think so, but taking into account fees, there are actually ZERO funds that beat the market over a 30 year period. You can research this on morningstar. Maybe there are some super secret private funds out there that beat the market over the long period (Madoff's fund was one of them). So ya, you would think they wouldn't stay in business, but marketing and complexity is powerful. Their best trick is to hold a ton of funds in their portfolio then show you the ones that have had a good run the last 10 years. Then of course a different ten in a few years. Hold enough assets in enough configurations and of course you will have some winners over shorter periods of time. But good luck guessing which ones.
      - vostok 10y ago
        I wasn't aware that Morningstar had publicly available hedge fund performance data. What do they show for Renaissance's Medallion Fund over the last 29 years?