It's basically a mutual fund?
Titan launches its mobile ‘not a hedge fund’
31–40 of 56 posts
Re: Titan launches its mobile ‘not a hedge fund’
#32I hope they aren't just using 13Fs to determine hedgefund holdings. I saw one being filed recently and I was amazed at how useless they are for determining a funds actual positions.
You don't need to report short positions. This resulted in many scenarios where we were short a company, but from our filings, it looked like we were long. 3 examples:
- Class A and B shares. If you are long one and short the other, only the long shows up.
- Own the stock, but sold calls? Don't need to report the calls. Plus, options that are reported are done so as if they are fully exercisable.
- Debt, Convertible debt, and types of warrants and other instruments are not reported.
So don't use them to determine a fund's thinking.
Re: Titan launches its mobile ‘not a hedge fund’
#33The average person is much better off putting their money in a whole market index fund that charges a tenth of a percent (or less) rather than a managed fund that charges 1%. The managed fund is unlikely to outperform the index fund in the long term.
I would go beyond that and say that the average person should use those retirement date targeted funds. Those are usually cheap and minimize risk towards your retirement date.
There can be several large issues with target date funds.
1. Ignores income streams from things like social security, reverse mortgages, held away assets
2. Ignorant to future medical advances that could change life expectancy
3. Built on past assumptions of bond yields and interest rate levels
4. higher fees than an equity ETF
5. large discrepancies between each one
6. Bonds are not necessarily less risky than stocks. As yields drop, bond convexity is high, meaning the bond price will be very sensitive to interest rate changes
Re: Titan launches its mobile ‘not a hedge fund’
#34I hope they aren't just using 13Fs to determine hedgefund holdings. I saw one being filed recently and I was amazed at how useless they are for determining a funds actual positions. You don't need to report short positions. This resulted in many scenarios where we were short a company, but from our filings, it looked like we were long. 3 examples: - Class A and B shares. If you are long one and short the other, only…
Agree 100% with this. 13Fs are not indicative of most HFs actual bets. Especially if they are running strategies where a bet consists of a bundle of securities (Eg convert arbitrage).
Also, Given delay in reporting, you’d just be getting in after they get in and likely they get out before you do. So the aggregate impact costs from this strategy becomes their alpha. Hence why some of these LS guys always talk up their positions.
Re: Titan launches its mobile ‘not a hedge fund’
#35I hope they aren't just using 13Fs to determine hedgefund holdings. I saw one being filed recently and I was amazed at how useless they are for determining a funds actual positions. You don't need to report short positions. This resulted in many scenarios where we were short a company, but from our filings, it looked like we were long. 3 examples: - Class A and B shares. If you are long one and short the other, only…
Agree 100% with this. 13Fs are not indicative of most HFs actual bets. Especially if they are running strategies where a bet consists of a bundle of securities (Eg convert arbitrage). Also, Given delay in reporting, you’d just be getting in after they get in and likely they get out before you do. So the aggregate impact costs from this strategy becomes their alpha. Hence why some of these LS guys always talk up their…
Agree with the second. Making money in stocks is not just what to invest in, but when.
If you bought FB in the beginning of July just after a hedge fund reported it (but they actually bought in April and sold in July) that would have been bad for you.
Re: Titan launches its mobile ‘not a hedge fund’
#36Both the article and https://www.titanvest.com/performance/ cite performance relative to S&P 500. If you expand out disclosures it says "Figures cited for 2017 and since 2004 represent backtested performance of a hypothetical account using Titan’s investment process, not an actual amount." It's trivial to overfit a backtest to get whatever results you want. For a startup whose objective is to "enable you to become a…
yep and it makes this statement rather suspicious:“Of the ~3500+ hedge funds out there, we track ~5% of them. We believe these are the good guys: long-term oriented and rigorous in their research.”
Its the 5% that performed well in their backtest, but that doesnt mean they will perform the best going forward.
What Titan did in 2016 was chose the top 5% of funds that did well up until that point. Then when they saw it performed bad in 2017, they most likely went back and chose a different 5% that did better. And recalculated all the returns.
The problem is you cant keep doing this once you actually start investing with real money.
Re: Titan launches its mobile ‘not a hedge fund’
#371% of capital every year is crazy money. If the fund is really that good, they'll take x% of the profits and not charge a fee on capital. You take capital because you're not really that good, and you don't know (like basically everyone else) what's going to happen. Funds know they can't reliably beat the market, and thus don't offer such structures. I want a ratcheting fee structure. No capital fees, and no fee if th…
One newer fee structure to emerge on the endowment side is the 1-or-30 structure, which tries to incentivize managers when they outperform, but also allows managers to keep the lights in an underperforming period.
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1505qmcspbw8p...
On the retail side, I'm sure using incentive fees is compelling to some potential clients. However, from a compliance perspective, offering a performance-based fee is thought to be operationally difficult. Incentive fee structures with high watermarks or hurdles are not trivial to calculate or grasp. As recently as the 80's, I believe incentive fee structures were outright illegal to offer to non-qualified investors. This is why fees typically are a percentage of assets.
Re: Titan launches its mobile ‘not a hedge fund’
#381% of capital every year is crazy money. If the fund is really that good, they'll take x% of the profits and not charge a fee on capital. You take capital because you're not really that good, and you don't know (like basically everyone else) what's going to happen. Funds know they can't reliably beat the market, and thus don't offer such structures. I want a ratcheting fee structure. No capital fees, and no fee if th…
There's are plenty of long-short ETF's with much lower fees as well, if one really wants to get into hedge-fund style investment.
I personally wouldn't go for it at any price, but if you want to, there's no reason to overpay.
Re: Titan launches its mobile ‘not a hedge fund’
#391% of capital every year is crazy money. If the fund is really that good, they'll take x% of the profits and not charge a fee on capital. You take capital because you're not really that good, and you don't know (like basically everyone else) what's going to happen. Funds know they can't reliably beat the market, and thus don't offer such structures. I want a ratcheting fee structure. No capital fees, and no fee if th…
If the fund is really good, they take 2% of the capital and 20% of the profits... (Actually if the fund is really good it's closed to outside investors, so it doesn't really matter.) But of course if a fund is really good it's not just a portfolio of 20 hedge-fund darlings rebalanced quarterly. I don't know how do they select the 20 names from hedge fund filings (looking only at their long positions, as they don't di…
Some well known funds take 30% of profits.
Re: Titan launches its mobile ‘not a hedge fund’
#40Both the article and https://www.titanvest.com/performance/ cite performance relative to S&P 500. If you expand out disclosures it says "Figures cited for 2017 and since 2004 represent backtested performance of a hypothetical account using Titan’s investment process, not an actual amount." It's trivial to overfit a backtest to get whatever results you want. For a startup whose objective is to "enable you to become a…
yep and it makes this statement rather suspicious:“Of the ~3500+ hedge funds out there, we track ~5% of them. We believe these are the good guys: long-term oriented and rigorous in their research.” Its the 5% that performed well in their backtest, but that doesnt mean they will perform the best going forward. What Titan did in 2016 was chose the top 5% of funds that did well up until that point. Then when they saw it…
Do you have any evidence for any of this, or did you just pick the most uncharitable possible scenario and present it as factual?