The coming hedge-fund apocalypse

[zengrifter]

Over the Hedge
Signs of the coming hedge-fund apocalypse.

By Daniel Gross
Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007 / SLATE

Because I'm writing a book about booms and busts in American history, I've spent a lot of time thinking about how real and rational economic trends cross over into bubble territory. For the Internet, residential real estate (now officially popped), and alternative energy, there were always telltale signs of bubbleness.

Those same signs suggest that our next bubble is already here, and it's … hedge funds.

Let's review the classic warning signs:

1) Public investors are getting really excited when insiders sell, believing they're being cut in on a great deal. Friday was the IPO of hedge fund Fortress, the first U.S. hedge fund to go public. It was priced at $18.50 and closed the first day at $31, a 67.6 percent increase. The whole idea of hedge funds is that they are exclusive and that the massive rewards—2 percent management fees and 20 percent of the profits—flow to the guys who own it. The advantage of running a hedge fund, as opposed to a mutual fund, is that you don't have to tell the public how much you've made or shed any light on precisely how you did it. So, why are some of the sharpest tacks in the business willing to sell out now and sacrifice all the advantages inherent in the hedge-fund structure? According to the prospectus, the five guys who started the business collectively own shares worth about $9.4 billion based on today's price.

2) Everybody and their mother is getting into the business. In the late stages of most bubbles, people from outside the hot industry—including many who never showed much interest in business at all—plunge headfirst into the boiling waters. You know them. The Fortune 500 corporate warriors who reinvented themselves as dot-com hipsters in the spring of 2000, the accountant who gave it all up to flip condos in Naples last year, the oil-company executives who would like you to think they're really interested in carbon capture and cellulosic ethanol. Now, we've got politicians, diplomats, and policy wonks, who are frequently the last to know about any important private-sector trend, starting hedge funds.

...more - http://www.slate.com/id/2159584/fr/flyout