Thursday, October 05, 2006

對沖基金與信評

對沖基金與信評

Hedge Funds' Next Wrinkle: Ratings



對沖基金最近已經夠倒楣了, 現在又出現了下一個難關 --- 信評.

我有一個很聰明又很會賺錢的朋友Aaron在對沖基金作的很好, 他曾不只一次在閒談中擔心對沖基金的好景不再. (那可是會破壞他在全世界各地置產的美夢的, just kidding, Aaron, if you are watching) 看來他的擔心是真的, 只是在那天來到前他可能已經賺飽退休了.

讀完此文我有幾點想法:
1. HF關起門來神秘兮兮搞的時代已經過去, 他們令人匪夷所思的管理費(1-2%+20% of profit over watermark)能繼續下去的時日應該不多了
2. 投資大眾被允許進入Hedge Fund/富人俱樂部(多少人有五百萬美元的"閒錢" liquid asset 呢)的時代即將來臨. 目前最大的障礙就是未知的風險.
3. 我的公司(作FI的風險管理)將會賺到許多HF的錢, 哈哈!
4. 惠將更有機會進入HF賺大錢, 哈哈哈!
5. Aaron快來請我家惠吃飯, 說不定她有一天會評等你的公司呢, 哈哈哈哈!
(original)

By SERENA NG and SHEFALI ANAND
August 25, 2006; Page C3

The country's largest credit-ratings services are taking steps to break into the potentially lucrative business of rating hedge funds.

The ratings firms believe that demand from big investors like pension funds for such assessments will spur more hedge-fund managers to obtain independent evaluations of their ability to steer clear of problems.

Moody's Investors Service, a unit of Moody's Corp., has spent much of the past year developing a model that rates "operational risk" of hedge funds -- essentially, the likelihood a fund will lose money or even shut down because of lax or fraudulent management -- and is expecting to publish its first such rating in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Standard & Poor's, a McGraw-Hill Cos. unit that has provided credit ratings on a few individual hedge funds since at least 2000, is preparing to publish a set of criteria detailing how it will assess the risk of funds going forward.

The ratings firms are hoping to fill an information gap in an industry that is fast gaining popularity with a broader range of investors but remains largely shrouded in secrecy. Lightly regulated hedge funds now manage more than $1 trillion for wealthy individuals and large institutions.

Before putting money with a hedge fund, investors often perform checks on the fund, which may include visiting the fund manager and discussing its internal controls to prevent financial fraud and other risk-management strategies. Larger investors also contract outside consultants to conduct this "due diligence" work on their behalf. There are also a handful of private firms in the U.S. and Europe that provide independent certifications and reports on hedge funds' internal systems and controls, and now the ratings services want a slice of the pie.

The new Moody's ratings would address, among other things, whether funds are properly valuing their assets and whether they have adequate risk-management systems. It also plans to conduct background checks on individual fund managers, including their educational and professional qualifications, work experience, and any previous run-ins with the law. Such issues are of concern to investors in the wake of alleged frauds at firms like Bayou Management and Wood River Capital Management.

S&P's credit ratings on hedge funds -- most of which currently aren't public -- are meant to reflect the likelihood of a fund defaulting on loans made to it. They also take into account hedge funds' operational risk and consider whether a fund will be able to repay all its creditors if it has to liquidate its portfolio.

Fitch Ratings has put out credit ratings on a handful of hedge funds for several years, but like S&P, most of those ratings are private and can be viewed only by investors and institutions that hedge funds choose to share the ratings with.

Fitch, a unit of Fimalac SA of Paris, also does ratings on the operational risk of several hedge funds in Europe, and is looking to do this in the U.S., says Eileen Fahey, a managing director.

It is unclear if many hedge funds will step up to be scrutinized by the big ratings firms, as many continue to seek to avoid scrutiny by outsiders.

Write to Serena Ng at serena.ng@wsj.com1 and Shefali Anand at shefali.anand@wsj.com2

Covered Bonds

Covered Bonds

Washington Mutual to sell first U.S. covered bonds



美國終於要開始賣歐洲風行已久的Covered Bonds了, 還是由我們的一個大客戶發行的 (三家中的兩家IB也是我們的客戶呢, 哈哈).

什麼是Covered Bonds呢? 他基本上是一種新的,較便宜的集資工具,特別是跟發行公司債或甚至向政府機構借(經由FHLB的advance)比起來. Covered Bonds 的投資人有雙重保護: 對發行公司的要求權以及被發行公司當作抵押品的要求權. 由於以上的緣故, 今天一個信譽卓著的公司又有許多錢投資在證劵化商品(MBS, ABS, etc, 很多美國公司符合這個要求) 要借錢來從事一項新的產品開發, Covered Bonds 是最便宜的了. 一般而言發行公司只要提供比政府債劵多10-20 bps (0.1%-0.2%) 就夠了, 比公司債(AAA,2yr for 30-40 bps)低多了. 投資人也獲利, 因為他們可以幾乎零風險(跟政府債劵一樣)來拿到比政府債劵高0.2%的報酬率.

然而, 天下沒有白吃的午餐, 這款"好康的事"哪裡生出來呢? 答案是"公司的名號"(信用)以及"公司的基礎設施"(對抵押品的定價以及風險管理能力) 哈哈哈,這又是敝公司下去分一杯羹的時候了, 當然啦, 在三家投資銀行分完他們的份之後.

European Mortgage Federation上的介紹
By Al Yoon

NEW YORK, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Washington Mutual Inc., the third largest lender in the United States, will become the first bank in the nation to tap the growing covered-bond market by selling up to 20 billion euro of debt backed by home loans, according to Standard & Poor's.

Seattle-based Washington Mutual (WM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) plans by mid-month to access the 1.6 trillion euro market where it may see lower long-term funding costs than through sales of its corporate debt or advances from the Federal Home Loan Bank system, according to Todd Niemy, an analyst at S&P in New York.

Covered bonds differ from traditional mortgage-backed securities in that the debt remains on the company's balance sheet, allowing it to retain control over the assets. The bonds are secured by a portfolio of assets that in the case of the borrower's insolvency would be used to make payments.

The bonds will allow U.S. banks to diversify funding into a European market that has undergone a "renaissance" in recent years, S&P said. Germany, Spain and the UK have been particularly active issuers since 2004.

Washington Mutual "is taking advantage of an expanding European appetite for U.S. mortgage credit," Niemy said in an interview. "A lot more U.S. mortgage bonds are being purchased in Europe and Asia" and the covered bond sale is a natural extension, he said.

Washington Mutual will provide a mortgage bond backed by mortgages with fixed-interest for five years, and adjustable thereafter, as collateral for the covered bond, S&P said. A call to Washington Mutual wasn't immediately returned.

The "AAA" rated issue will probably trigger more covered bond sales by U.S. companies, S&P said. Washington Mutual itself will sell the bonds up to six times a year, S&P said, citing the company.

Barclays Capital, ABN Amro and Deutsche Bank are managing the Washington Mutual covered bond sale. (Additional reporting by Bei Bei She in London) (Reporting by Al Yoon, editing by Leslie Adler; Reuters Messaging: albert.yoon.reuters.com@reuters.net; email: albert.yoon@reuters.com; Tel: 646-223-6347))

original

羅賓漢傳奇

羅賓漢傳奇

羅賓漢(Robin Hood)是所謂 "創投慈善事業"(Venture Philanthropy)的先驅.
Venture Philanthropy 完全擁抱自由市場原則. 他們使用一套統一的"科學計量方法"來公平的評估每一個計畫的成效. 他們用的方法很簡單,每一塊錢的"投資"導致將來受幫助窮人加起來可賺回來的錢數. 使用這套方法他們可以比較兩個計畫的優劣然後將錢(有限資源)用在刀口上. 這跟他們run hedge fund的精神一樣 --- 用一個統一的定價方法在不同的asset class之間找出他們的相對價格, 然後買低賣高, 就這麼簡單.(see,你也可以開一家 hedge fund了)

通常好的project可毫無困難的拿到資源, 無效的則被無情的丟棄.

Robin Hood

這"計量方法"對一個以"對抗貧窮"為主旨的組織久多麼proper啊. 我想, 對於其他不同目的組織應該也不難去設計一套"計量化"的方法吧. 你要開一個"廖添丁"慈善組織嗎? 我可是有很多不錯的idea喔!



The legend of Robin Hood

A rebel's code


What makes Robin Hood different from other charities.

Every dollar counts


To entice donations, board members cover all administrative and staff expenses-meaning all contributions go 100% to fund programs.

Follow the metrics


Robin Hood spends more than $500,000 a year gathering data on the agencies it funds, and $300,000 on a staff economist who crunches numbers. Programs that don't satisfy their benefit/cost benchmarks are out.

Don't save your powder


Robin Hood doesn't have an endowment and doesn't want one: It aims to spend everything it raises each year.

Be cool


Poverty-fighting goals may be wonky, but Robin Hood's stylish courting of celebrities gives it unmatched cachet.

Power Players 看看這個董事名單吧!



The 28-member Robin Hood board has unmatched influence.

* Lee S. Ainslie III, Maverick Capital

* Victoria B. Bjorklund, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett

* Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman Sachs

* Peter F. Borish, Twinfields Capital

* Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children's Zone

* Tom Brokaw, NBC News

* Maurice Chessa, Bedford-Stuyvesant I Have a Dream Program

* Richard L. Chilton Jr., Chilton Investment

* Steven A. Cohen, SAC Capital

* Glenn Dubin, Highbridge Capital

* Marian Wright Edelman, Children's Defense Fund

* Richard S. Fuld Jr., Lehman Brothers

* Jeffrey R. Immelt, General Electric

* Paul Tudor Jones II, Tudor Investment

* Peter Kiernan III, Cyrus Capital

* Marie-Josée Kravis, Hudson Institute

* Kenneth G. Langone, Invemed Associates

* Mary McCormick, Fund for the City of New York

* Doug Morris, Universal Music

* Daniel S. Och, Och-Ziff Capital

* Gwyneth Paltrow, Actress

* Robert Pittman, Pilot Group

* David Puth, J.P. Morgan Chase

* Diane Sawyer, ABC News

* Alan D. Schwartz, Bear Stearns

* John Sykes, MTV Networks

* Harvey Weinstein, Weinstein Co.

* Dirk Ziff, Ziff Brothers



The legend of Robin Hood



How the leaders of the hedge fund world have banded together to fight poverty - taking gobs of money from the rich, applying strict financial metrics in giving it away, and making philanthropy cool among the business elite



By Andy Serwer, Fortune senior editor-at-large

(Fortune Magazine) -- The idea behind one of the most innovative and influential philanthropic organizations of our time sprang from one of the more boneheaded macroeconomic calls ever made on Wall Street. Or as hedge fund maestro Paul Tudor Jones tells it, "The biggest error I've ever made had the best possible outcome."

The story begins in the summer of 1987. Stock prices were soaring, but so, too, were interest rates. The then 32-year-old Jones - who had made buckets of money during the go-go 1980s - was getting nervous. That September he told his investors that the stock market reminded him of 1929 and a crash was inevitable.

Even after October's brutal 23% one-day drop, Jones remained apocalyptic. He called up fellow hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin and pleaded, "It's happening. We're going into a great depression. We've got to do something about it. I want to start a foundation to help, and I'd like you to be involved."

Of course, Jones was dead wrong about a depression, but that hasn't mattered. He has gone on to become a Wall Street titan, with some $14.7 billion under management. More to the point, his brainchild, a charity called Robin Hood -which was born out of the direst predictions - has become a paragon, forging a new model for philanthropy and attracting heaps of cash from an enviable roster of high-profile benefactors.

In the broadest terms, Robin Hood does what its name suggests: It takes from the rich (especially its own board members) and gives to the poor. But even though its mission is focused-to fight poverty in New York City - and the roughly $525 million it has distributed pales in comparison to what Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have given, Robin Hood's influence is extraordinary.
Venture philanthropy

Robin Hood was a pioneer in what is now called venture philanthropy, or charity that embraces free-market forces. An early practitioner of using metrics to measure the effectiveness of grants, it is a place where strategies to alleviate urban poverty are hotly debated, ineffectual plans are coldly discarded, and its staff of 66 hatches radical new ideas.

It also has a radical approach to drumming up money. At first Robin Hood's donation base was limited mostly to friends of Jones's, which is to say, hedge fund managers like Dubin. Jones latched onto a clever financial model with obvious appeal to contributors: All the organization's administrative expenses are covered by Robin Hood's board members, meaning every penny donated goes directly to the cause.

Today Robin Hood is much more than a charitable organization. While it retains a strong hedgie flavor, its board is now a blue-chip collection of Who's Who in business and media that includes GE's (Charts) Jeffrey Immelt, ABC's Diane Sawyer, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs (Charts), as well as leading lights from the nonprofit world like Marian Wright Edelman. Actress Gwyneth Paltrow is on the board too, and both the Rolling Stones and the Who have done fundraisers for the group.

Such connections have helped Robin Hood not only draw interest and money on a nationwide scale but become a gathering place for a new generation of rich and prominent Americans - a business and social network that reflects myriad intertwining relationships among board members, staff, grantees, and donors. As a significant benefactor of the organization puts it, "Robin Hood is like the cool table in the high school cafeteria."

It is not all fun and games. "It's a bigtime commitment," says Blankfein of his role as a board member. "These are serious, accomplished, dedicated people. They demand your brainpower." But the benefits and information can flow both ways. "I've been so impressed with the metrics they use," says GE's Immelt. "There's a lot we can learn from that for the GE Fund and the GE Foundation."

In fact, nonprofits around the country study and borrow from Robin Hood's programs, and copycats have sprung up in London and San Francisco. Perhaps most important, Robin Hood has brought the idea of philanthropy to a younger generation of superwealthy Americans who might not otherwise have considered it. Says board member Tom Brokaw: "Every community could have a Robin Hood-like operation. It wouldn't be as large or as well-heeled as New York's is, because it's like Willie Sutton said, That's where the money is. But when I talk to people in Denver and Memphis and other places and I tell them about Robin Hood, their eyes light up."
Kicking out the drug dealers

I recently ventured to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn to meet Paul Jones at the Excellence Charter School for boys, an institution that Robin Hood supports and that in many ways reflects its workings. The school is the product of a pooling of dollars by the New York City Board of Education, Robin Hood, and Jones personally, plus contributions from a variety of corporations.

The school's physical plant, including a fabulous AstroTurf roof, would be the envy of any $30,000-a-year private school. Inside, groups of energized young teachers and little boys, kindergarten through second grade (and 100% minority), in white shirts and ties, ready themselves for the coming school year. Principal Jabali Sawicki tells me there is a 170-student waiting list.

Just a few years ago this building was a neighborhood eyesore, a symbol of all that had gone wrong in Bed-Stuy. Originally constructed in the 1880s as PS 70, and later used as a yeshiva, it became a home to drug dealers and prostitutes after a fire in the 1970s - even a venue for illegal cock fights.

Then, in 2004, another organization that Jones supports, Uncommon Schools, committed $30 million ($6 million from Jones personally) to buy and renovate the property. David Saltzman, the executive director of Robin Hood, persuaded Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, to design the facility, which was completed this spring. Signs throughout the school were done gratis by renowned design firm Pentagram. And Robin Hood sent a check for $150,000 for the school's operating budget. Books were donated by Scholastic (Charts) and HarperCollins, which have given a collective two million volumes to Robin Hood - and which explains why my arm is resting on a pristine copy of Harry the Dirty Dog as I interview Jones inside a classroom.

Jones, 51, who is as press-shy as he is charismatic, is said to have earned $500 million last year. He was raised in Memphis and educated at the University of Virginia, where he donated $35 million toward a new basketball arena, which opened in July. He's also invested tens of millions to build a nature preserve in Tanzania.

But it is here in Brooklyn that Jones pursues his biggest passion. "I love education because I love kids," he tells me in his assertive drawl. "If I retired, I'd love to teach second, third, or fourth grade. I also like education because I think it has the greatest multiplicative powers in terms of the ultimate good you're going to do for the hours and dollars expended."

Robin Hood gave grants to 21 charter schools as well as 24 regular public schools in 2005. "Fifteen years ago the only way you could impact inner-city kids who didn't have proper educational services was through an after-school program, which is a very poor substitute for a great school day," Jones says. "That changed because the charter movement began, and so my priorities shifted."

Don't charter schools draw precious resources away from other public schools?

Jones makes no apologies: "Charter schools are the best thing that ever happened to education in New York City because they provide competition to regular public schools and raise the bar that everyone is trying to attain. They provide thought leadership for other schools, so again there's a multiplicative impact."

The Excellence school, which falls under what Robin Hood calls its education portfolio, is one of more than 200 programs that it funds in New York City -everything from soup kitchens, job training for ex-cons, and housing for the homeless to financial service centers for the poor, where they are instructed on how to apply for the earned-income tax credit. (In 2006, Robin Hood helped poor working families claim $98 million in tax refunds.)

One of its first grantees: the Association to Benefit Children (ABC), an immaculate and warm day-care center for the city's most needy kids. ABC is also where board member Marie-Josée Kravis - economist and wife of buyout king Henry Kravis - first became enamored of Robin Hood, even after a little boy asked on her first tour what color underwear she was wearing.
Benefit to the poor per dollar of cost

Robin Hood's relationship with its grantees is not unlike that of a private-equity fund or an activist hedge fund. If the client organization is thriving, Robin Hood helps guide expansion efforts. If it is struggling, Robin Hood digs in, sending consultants and meting out advice on office space and leases, technology, legal, and HR. It has a program that matches interested businesspeople with nonprofit boards that need boosting. It will recommend new executive directors. It has solicited donations of professional services from the city's top law firms and the likes of Deloitte & Touche, GE, and Microsoft (Charts). "With Robin Hood, there is constant evaluation," says board member and grantee Geoffrey Canada, whose Harlem Children's Zone has adopted 60 blocks in Harlem. "It is a rigorous - and can be an exhaustive - process."

In some cases the evaluation is simple, and the choice is obvious. The head of a drug-treatment program is found using drugs: Goodbye. But in most cases Robin Hood relies on a complex system of metrics, which calculates the success of a grant by estimating its benefit to the poor per dollar of cost to Robin Hood, much like a business's rate of return.

Robin Hood hires an outside evaluation firm to collect data from each grantee. In 2005 it paid $552,000 to Philliber Research Associates for this service. The numbers come back to Robin Hood and are then crunched by chief program officer Michael Weinstein, an MIT-trained economist (and also a former editorial writer for the New York Times).

"We set out to compare the relative return of any two grants, no matter what their purpose, much the way an investor compares the relative return of any two investments," says Weinstein. "For most of our grants, our basic measure of success is, How much does our grant boost early adult earnings of poor individuals?" To estimate earnings, Weinstein taps into statistics and data from many sources. "A benefit/ cost ratio of five," he explains, "means that for every dollar Robin Hood contributes to the program, collective earnings of the poor individuals served by the program rise by $5. As a ratio, the benefit/cost calculation can be used to compare the value of any two grants, no matter their purpose." In effect, Weinstein is saying, his model allows Robin Hood to compare apples and oranges.

These metrics help Robin Hood identify programs that aren't worth the investment. Say it gives a grant of $150,000 a year to a charter school in Harlem that produces a benefit/cost ratio of six (i.e., every dollar Robin Hood spends on the school purportedly boosts the future earnings of the students by $6 a year). That compares with a $125,000-a-year grant that Robin Hood used to make to a Bronx afterschool program that emphasized the creative arts, which scored only a 0.6. Robin Hood supports a job-training group in Brooklyn that scores a nine, as well as one in Manhattan that scores only a 4.5. But that's because the Manhattan group serves ex-cons, so lower-paying jobs are to be expected.

Does the Robin Hood board cut grantees loose? You bet. Each year roughly 10% lose funding. "They size these agencies up in a gimlet-eyed fashion," says Tom Brokaw. "It's like going to a GE division meeting."

Is it right to treat philanthropy like a business? Or is this just another example of a free-market mentality overriding a pure sense of compassion? To hedge fund manager and former Robin Hood chairman Stan Druckenmiller, who remains a key benefactor, that's ridiculous: "If you spend a dollar on something that doesn't work, why continue? This is about trying to solve poverty, not applying Band-Aids."

Adds Marie-Josée Kravis: "Measuring is appropriate as one instrument of understanding. When you look at corporations, you don't look only at their earnings. You look at their product pipeline, the quality of their management, their labor relations-things you can't measure precisely. And it's the same in the nonprofit world. It's important to understand, to the extent that we can, how effective our dollars are."
One prison's high school

On a muggy afternoon in the middle of June, I drove to Rikers Island - New York City's massive jail complex - with Beth Navon, executive director of Robin Hood grantee Friends of Island Academy (FOIA). Robin Hood gave $350,000 this year to FOIA, which offers advice and support to youth incarcerated at Rikers.

Robin Hood also placed hedge fund manager Anne Dias Griffin, wife of Ken Griffin, who runs the mega Citadel hedge fund company in Chicago, on the FOIA board. Navon and I are met at the jail by Tongo Eisen-Martin, a FOIA staffer who has a master's degree in African-American studies from Columbia. As we descend into the bowels of the jail and surrender first our cellphones, then our IDs, my heart begins to race. I'm handed a temporary ID.

"Don't lose that, or we have to strip-search the entire jail," a guard warns me. Gotcha. One of FOIA's programs is running a high school inside Rikers, and one of those classrooms is our destination. Eisen-Martin, who teaches slam poetry, on this day decides to turn the class into a Q&A session. With me.

Immediately I'm surrounded by prisoners who grill me about the war in Iraq, Bill Gates, and racism. After an hour of nonstop questioning by what I later learn is a group of especially violent prisoners (two of the most curious happen to be alleged murderers), with no guards in sight, it's time to go. "If you can give these kids any bit of knowledge, you are helping them," Eisen-Martin tells me. "You never know what will trigger something good inside of them." I nod, but I'm wrung out and anxious to get home. Besides, I have a Robin Hood party to go to that night - an experience that couldn't be more different from Rikers.
"You gotta give, baby, give!"

"All right, who's getting indicted here?" Jon Stewart screams at the crowd of 4,000 of the New York area's wealthiest citizens, who chuckle, perhaps a bit nervously. Robin Hood's annual benefit dinner at the Jacob Javits Center, emceed by Stewart and Tom Brokaw, is considered by many the party of the year. It would be impressive enough for its very A-list crowd - everyone from Mel Karmazin to Mark Cuban to Matt Lauer - but even more remarkable is the astounding amount of money it raises.

Most charity dinners in New York are considered a smash if they bring in $1 million. Here success is measured in tens of millions. "If you are on Wall Street, particularly in hedge funds, you have to be here," says one of my tablemates.

The real action begins after Stewart's shtick, when Sotheby's Jamie Niven takes the stage to lead an auction unlike any other. The bidding-on a glam vacation package for eight to Mexico, Montana, and the Bahamas, for instance - is done with glow sticks and repeatedly hits the mid-six figures.

The power tables with the real heavy hitters - "billionaire's row," a friend calls it -are close to the stage. One table's guests have brought their primary-school-age kids and, amazingly, let the youngsters themselves bid for a package, as if it's some kind of game-even as the numbers top $300,000. (A Robin Hood board member next to me groans.) Stewart can't help a gibe: "Come on, kids, you can do better than that!"

At a break in the auction, a group of charter-school students perform a rap orchestrated by Jay-Z. "Read, baby, read," the kids chant. "You got to read, baby, read." Minutes later Paul Jones bounds up on stage and does his own Southern-man chicken-dance version: "You got to give, baby, give," Jones intones. "The more you give, the better you feel. The better you feel, the better you'll trade."

The crowd knows what's coming now: the serious money part of the auction. Robin Hood is raising funds to build a charter high school. "We are looking for a couple of $1 million bids for naming rights to the school's large facilities," announces Niven. And the sticks go up. Twelve of them. Niven and Jones then drum up 30 bids of $250,000 each for classrooms.

To reward all that giving, there's a performance by Beyoncé to end the evening. The final tally? In a single night Robin Hood hauls in $48 million. Some $20 million is earmarked for the new school - which will be matched by the board, $2.25 for each $1. And New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein, who at one point during the gala, at Jones's urging, stands and takes a bow, has said the city, in turn, will match the combined sum (as well as the amount of a tax credit). Overall, the $20 million for the school will grow to $180 million. The cost to put on the dinner? Around $5.6 million.

Robin Hood's fundraising machine is always in operation. It sells holiday cards and offers an online registry, which allows you to give a gift in someone's name to Robin Hood instead of buying a $5,000 espresso machine. Robin Hood's LemonAid program has kids from affluent families selling lemonade in Greenwich, Scarsdale, and the Hamptons. Last year it raised $120,000.

Robin Hood throws what it calls heroes' breakfasts to honor individuals who have dedicated their lives to fighting poverty - like Ellen Baxter of Broadway Housing, which provides apartments for the homeless - and to raise more dough. "Gwyneth Paltrow and I sat next to each other and cried at the last one together," Joel Klein tells me. And indeed, it's hard not to get choked up. (At the Baxter breakfast, a young woman described how she watched her mother die in a shelter before they were able to get a home.) "Stan Druckenmiller, Paul, they all cry," says a Robin Hood staffer. "You would too."

Then there are one-off events: The Rolling Stones played a benefit at Radio City Music Hall this spring, which raised $11 million - Harvey Weinstein even got the notoriously tightfisted band to donate $500,000. The Who played the Robin Hood gala in 2000. Why? "Because I adore and totally trust the people involved, like Harvey Weinstein and [Universal Music CEO] Doug Morris," says Pete Townshend. "Am I insane?" he asks. (Sure, Pete.)

Townshend continues: "[Robin Hood] reaches street level. That's all that matters to me." Townshend was also a headliner at the Concert for New York after 9/11, which, unbeknown to most, was orchestrated by a quartet of Robin Hood board members: Weinstein, Morris, John Sykes of MTV Networks, and former AOL chief Bob Pittman. "This show was a deeply disturbing event," says Townshend in an e-mail. "I was there to express rage at the terrorists and sympathy for those who died. I still believe the message we sent the world at the concert was a realistic one: We are vulnerable, but we are also incredibly strong - probably best not to f**k with us like this too often."
A society of peers

One of the most influential figures on Robin Hood's board was John F. Kennedy Jr., who died in July 1999. Brought on by Robin Hood's executive director, David Saltzman, who was a college friend at Brown, Kennedy helped entice Marie-Josée Kravis onto the board.

Tom Brokaw was drawn in after hearing Kennedy talk about Exodus House, a middle school for low-income families and a grantee of Robin Hood. After Kennedy's death, Brokaw became involved in Exodus "to kind of honor his life." Brokaw's friend Pittman then convinced the former news anchor to join Robin Hood's board. It's a small world at this altitude, and when you tick through the list of Robin Hood board members, it quickly becomes apparent that they are all connected.

Dubin was previously married to David Saltzman's sister. Tiki Barber of the New York Giants, who is on Robin Hood's leadership council, tells me he was introduced to the organization by Jonathan Tisch, whose family is an owner of the Giants - plus Barber played college football at the University of Virginia, Jones's alma mater. David Puth is a senior executive at J.P. Morgan, the bank that two years ago bought a majority stake in Glenn Dubin's hedge fund, Highbridge. And Gwyneth Paltrow and Harvey Weinstein are pals from way back.

Connections also provide Robin Hood with access to the world's hottest hedge funds. At the end of 2005 it had $177 million invested in funds run by board members Jones, Dubin, and Steven Cohen of SAC Capital as well as Eddie Lampert's ESL, Citadel, D.E. Shaw, and others.

Is it prudent or a conflict of interest for a philanthropy to invest in risky hedge funds, some managed by its own board members, many of which would be inaccessible to other charitable organizations? David Saltzman says no, and that these decisions are carefully reviewed to make sure they are consistent with regulatory guidelines.

Robin Hood's powerhouse board meets regularly four times a year at grantee sites. "When we get in a board meeting, everyone is a peer," says board member and hedge fund manager Lee Ainslie. "The people from the media, entertainment, nonprofits, and finance. No one dominates the discussion."

The vetting of grantees is painstaking and continual, in part because of the way Robin Hood's funding and disbursement works. For instance, all the money raised in one year, which in 2004 was $81 million, is doled out in the following year, in our example 2005. Yes, there is a reserve fund (the money invested with the hedgies), but there is no endowment. "Why put away money for a rainy day when it's pouring out?" asks Saltzman."New York City is arguably the richest city in the history of the world, and yet the majority of babies were born into poverty last year. Why would we keep powder dry under those circumstances?"

Some Robin Hood staffers are paid quite well-Weinstein, for one, earned some $300,000 in 2004 - although hardly what they might earn at one of the board members' hedge funds. Still, Robin Hood has attracted all manner of high-powered execs, such as Susan Sack, a former lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell and a onetime Goldman Sachs employee, who now helps grantees navigate the devilish New York real estate market. Others come from firms like McKinsey, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Accenture. "These are people who could have incredibly high-paying jobs anywhere, and yet they chose to do this," says David Saltzman. "And believe me, the quality of employees here is the same as at a Tudor or a Goldman."

Several years ago a staff member proposed funding a needle exchange, where drug users could turn in old hypodermic needles for new ones (or simply pick up new ones). Fresh needles help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDs. A vigorous debate ensued on the board. "Why don't we throw in a couple of hits of acid too?" Jones asked sarcastically. But to Druckenmiller and others, the issue was a matter of money: It's far cheaper to provide free needles to addicts than it is to care for an AIDS patient.

The pros won out, and on a recent boiling-hot afternoon, I visited a needle exchange that received $350,000 from Robin Hood this year, located in a small storefront on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Drug users slouched in throughout the afternoon, selecting needles (from three sizes), works, and other neatly packaged paraphernalia. In a second room, junkies nodded off on couches in front of a TV. (They are prohibited from shooting up there.) It is a shocking and powerful scene, and yet to supporters of the program, absolutely necessary.

The evidence they cite: In 1992 the HIV rate among New York City drug addicts was 52%. Subsequently, needle exchanges were introduced, and now the rate is 14%. "I have a soft spot for children's programs," says Glenn Dubin, "but the needle-exchange program also resonates with me because I think we did something very bold."
Keep your checkbook open

"I grew up in Washington Heights, so I do feel a real affinity with the work that we're doing," Dubin says. For Paul Jones, an out-of-towner, the motivation is slightly different: "All my success was gained basically in New York City, and this was my way of repaying New York. I couldn't have done what I did anywhere else in the world."

Jones's gift extends well beyond the tens of millions of dollars in checks he's written. "Paul's genius was that he created an organization that didn't have his name on the door to make it easier for him to entice people to join Robin Hood, not only for their money but also to contribute their time, energy, and brainpower," says David Saltzman. "It wasn't about his ego - it was about trying to do good."

Folks at Robin Hood insist that their mission has just begun. They say that one in every five New Yorkers lives in poverty and that the foundation must get bigger to meet this challenge. That means raising more money. And they know how to push for it.

One Robin Hood supporter who'd had a particularly good year says he was told that there were no $30,000 tables available for this year's benefit dinner, only $50,000 tables. "They wanted him to step up," says a colleague and fellow Robin Hood supporter. "I think they keep tabs on how well we are doing."

According to board member Ainslie, there are also new fundraising sources to be tapped-executives in real estate and Fortune 500 companies, for instance. "When we tell people their dollars are going to help their city, that every cent goes to those in need, that the board pays expenses, and that we hold our grantees accountable, you are talking about very powerful selling points," he says.

Robin Hood will need them, because with each year the organization gets in deeper and deeper. Robin Hood's momentum will continue to push the group forward. With huge capital projects like the Excellence school, simply maintaining these facilities will cost millions more each year. "Poverty is a growth business," Jones tells me. The good news is it seems that the best and brightest minds on Wall Street and in business are starting to do something about it.

Reporter associate Corey Hajim contributed to this story.

名字影響表現?

名字影響表現?

Is a Catchy Stock Symbol a Boon?



tickers_to_ride

Princeton University 及 Pomona College 分別對股票的短期及長期表現做研究後發現股票的代號取得有意義的比那些代號毫無意義的股票要表現的好. 有哪些例子呢? 哈雷機車的代號是HOG(豬), 蘇世比是BID(競標), 先進醫療光學是EYE(眼), 特級標準農場是PORK(豬肉), ...

Princeton 研究了800+個 在1990年及2004年間發行的股票, 他們把股票分兩組: 唸的出來的一組(如RAD或任何上述例子), 唸不出來的另一組(如RDA). 好唸的一組平均在第一天(IPO)後比另一組平均多上漲了8.5%. Wow!

另 一個Pomona College的研究更驚人. 史密斯教授請參與問卷的人從1984年到2004年間發行的股票中選出名字取的好的, 例如Anheuser Busch的BUD(百威啤酒), 西南航空的LUV(愛), 大哈瓦那菸草的PUFF(吐菸), 及Lion Country Safari的GRRR(肉食動物的低吼聲). 他們在那20年間平均每年賺進23.6%, 相對之下所有股票平均只賺進12.3%.

Efficient market hypothesis失靈了嗎?
替公司用心選取好股票代碼的經營團隊較用心經營公司嗎?

我們是不是可以把這個發現用於台灣的股市呢? 同樣的情況下, 4321, 2222, 3456 是否比 2352, 3491, 7630 等股票漲的快呢?

原文

Does Stock By Any Other Name Smell as Sweet?



Catchy Symbols Such as HOG
Help Likes of Harley-Davidson,
Yum, at Least in the Early Going
By JENNIFER VALENTINO
September 28, 2006; Page C1

For at least two years, Harley-Davidson Inc.'s investor-relations folks had thought about it: Their ticker symbol, HDI, wasn't exactly evocative of the motorcycle maker's image. And there was something better available: HOG, biker-slang term for a Harley motorcycle.

Something surprising has happened since Harley-Davidson adopted the symbol in mid-August: Its shares have gained nearly 16%, compared with about 4% for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index.

It wasn't the first time a stock has risen after adopting a catchy ticker symbol. Counterintuitive as it may seem, research suggests that companies with clever symbols do better than other companies. Any suggestion of a cause-and-effect relationship may be hokum, but tickers that make investors chuckle -- think Sotheby's BID, Advanced Medical Optics Inc.'s EYE or the apt PORK of Premium Standard Farms Inc. -- also may make them richer, at least for a time.

The studies do nothing to prove that a stock's ticker symbol has any influence on its price, and a ticker symbol certainly shouldn't rank high on an investor's crib notes for stock-picking. But the research may offer some insight into investor psychology and the importance of being memorable.

In one study, published in June in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at Princeton University found that companies with pronounceable symbols do better soon after an IPO than companies with symbols that can't be said as a word.

Princeton's Adam Alter and Daniel Oppenheimer looked at nearly 800 symbols that debuted on the New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange between 1990 and 2004 and divided them according to whether their symbol was pronounceable (like Rite Aid Corp.'s RAD) or not (like Reader's Digest Association Inc.'s RDA). They found investing $1,000 in the pronounceable stocks at the start of their first day of trading would have made you $85.35 more in that day than investing in unpronounceable ones.

A separate study suggests even longer-lasting effects. Pomona College finance Professor Gary Smith asked participants to rate ticker symbols according to "cleverness." From 1984 to 2004, a portfolio of stocks people considered the cleverest returned 23.6% compounded annually, compared with 12.3% for a hypothetical index of all NYSE and Nasdaq stocks. The clever stocks included such well-known stocks as Anheuser Busch Cos.. (BUD) and Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV), along with companies eventually delisted or acquired, such as Grand Havana Enterprises Inc. (PUFF) and Lion Country Safari (GRRR).

"A couple of these symbols crossed my path, and I thought 'Why do people do this? Just to be cute?' I really didn't know how this was going to turn out," said Prof. Smith, who wrote a paper on the study with two students and is submitting his findings to journals for review. Of course, not all of the companies with cute symbols did well. Concord Camera Corp. (LENS) did worse than the index for the period of the Pomona study.

Usually, ticker symbols are simply an abbreviation of the company name. Originally, they weren't even developed by companies, but by telegraph operators who were trying to save time as they transmitted data. One-letter tickers like C, the ticker symbol for Citigroup Inc., have long been considered the most valuable.

"It was a lot like what we do today with email and text messaging," said Shawn Connors, whose Stock Ticker Company makes historical replicas of ticker machines. "They had to come up with shortcuts for saying things."

Today, new companies submit their ticker-symbol preferences to an exchange for approval, and their requests are usually granted as long as the requested ticker isn't already taken.

Sometimes, when more-obvious choices are gone, a company is forced to come up with something less conventional -- and more clever. Town Sports International Holdings Inc. (CLUB), a fitness-club company that went public on June 2, chose a descriptive symbol only after learning that TSII was in use.

"We thought it would be good for people to have something they could easily remember," said Robert Giardina, the company's chief executive.

Some companies are more deliberate in aligning their ticker symbol with their brand. Yum Brands Inc., which runs restaurant chains including KFC, Pizza Hut and Long John Silver's, actually changed its name in 2002 in part to reflect its ticker symbol, YUM. The company, formerly known as Tricon Global Restaurants Inc., is trying to attract individual investors by advertising its name and ticker symbol at events such as the Kentucky Derby.

"It's easy for people to remember and puts a smile on their face," said Virginia Ferguson, a Yum spokeswoman. With a share price of $53.01, the stock is up about 230% from its 1997 debut price of $16, adjusted for splits, and has risen 68% since the name change to Yum Brands.

The idea that clever or pronounceable ticker symbols might better stick in investors' memories is an important component of both recent studies. Neither report proves causality, but one possible explanation for the results is that people prefer to work with information they can easily process.

When faced with complicated information -- say, stock listings -- people have a tendency to rely on mental shortcuts to simplify things. This leads them to develop "naive theories," said Princeton's Mr. Alter, a graduate student who did his research with Prof. Oppenheimer under a grant from the National Science Foundation to study how people react to differences in "fluency," or the ease with which information is processed.

Mr. Alter explained that people are more likely to believe that fluent information is true and that they have seen it before. For example, test subjects consistently rate the phrase "woes unite foes" as more true than "woes unite enemies," because the rhyme in the first phrase makes it easier to comprehend.

"It is possible that [people] are initially more attracted to fluently named stocks, that they pay particular attention to those stocks, or even that they favor those stocks because they have developed an association between easily processed names and success," he said.

Prof. Smith suggests another possibility: that clever ticker symbols could indicate something about a company's management or marketing team that turns out to be important to the stock's performance.

"Maybe it's a weird marker. Maybe it doesn't show up in the balance sheets and profits and losses when the companies start out," he said.

Prof. Smith said he believes the results raise doubts about the efficient-market hypothesis, the theory that stock prices reflect all known information and that it isn't possible to consistently beat the market without inside knowledge. A stock's ticker symbol is public information, so, under the hypothesis, differences in symbols shouldn't be tied to share performance.

Michael Cooper, an associate professor of finance at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, who has studied investor behavior, said that both papers were "intriguing," but that he would need to see further study before accepting the results.

"It doesn't mean there isn't some truth to them," Mr. Cooper said. But he said both studies need to more carefully control for fundamental differences among the companies studied to determine whether ticker symbol alone accounts for differences in performance. A stock with a hard-to-pronounce ticker might just happen to underperform a cleverly tickered stock simply because it is poorly managed.

And he thought the Princeton paper in particular could have a problem with "survivorship bias" because it dealt only with stocks for which activity was recorded a year after their entry into the market, possibly excluding poorly performing stocks that were delisted or otherwise disappeared before the year was up.

The researchers themselves say it probably wouldn't behoove investors to make decisions based on their studies. The effects in the Princeton study were statistically significant only for the first day of trading in a company's stock. And both studies were backward-looking, so there is no guarantee they could predict future results. Town Sports' stock, for example, has fallen as low as $10.74 from its opening price of $13, despite its catchy symbol.

"We certainly don't recommend that people make trading decisions based on our findings," Mr. Alter said. "Rather, our findings suggest that economic models should take psychological factors...into account if they are designed to faithfully capture how the markets operate in practice."

Write to Jennifer Valentino at jennifer.valentino@wsj.com

Love Story

Love Story

愛的故事 --- 華爾街quant版. 這是從 Emanuel Derman 處轉載. Derman這個人有一種geek式的幽默, 看不懂這篇文章請不要罵我, 這原來就是寫給華爾街的人看的.

Love Story


Recently, I received the letter reprinted below.

Dear Mr Derman,

You are always writing about the difficulty of being a good quant, but it’s not that hard. Read please my story and don’t be so serious!

I have come to New York with a PhD from ********. Quickly, I answered an internet ad by a chasseur de tête who sent me to a foreign bank.
Two interviews and I aced them all. A week later, I’m on the desk. “Dude, you are getting a Dell!” I say to myself.

With my scientific PhD, I find option theory easy as π. I have studied heat conduction and quantum mechanics so I quickly comprehend the options: α is intercept, β slope, Γ curvature,∆ tangent, σ temperature, θ sensitivity, µ drift. If I know derivatives, I know Derivatives. Soon I am an expert at Black-Scholes and Beyond. Yield curves are strings. Feynman to me? Kaç to you! Everything’s an option. I am one dynamic hedger, man.

On the prop desk my boss is Alden, an MBA, and I’m his quantitative guy. He calls me a geek; he knows no math but he sure knows business; he can use the same word as noun, adjective, exclamation and gerund in single sentence when he’s angry. Alden’s risque assistant is Lidia, a truly exotic option, a total knock-out with a non-normal distribution which makes the option salesman whistle and mutter softly about barrier penetration.

I have rational expectations for Lidia but I feel she don’t respect me. She like old movies but has no taste for mathematics and its beauty. To her I am far out-of-the-money.

Now the bank wants to do structured products. I have Excel, I buy VBA, I get models from optionmodels.com and now I’m in business. We’re doing long-term puts and calls, down-and-outs, converts, one-touches, spread options, CDS, vol swaptions, whatever, and I’m getting all the prices. I find model for anything. Easy as Dell. Once a week we run my spreadsheet to mark the book. Big P&L fast. Then late dinner with Alden at Bouley or Jean-Georges.

But always Lidia’s on my mind. When I watch her wandering across the floor, I cannot but think of excess kurtosis. I try to cliquet with her for coffee but she DK my trade. I sense there is little chance of a transformation between her p-measure and my q-measure.

One day someone offer Alden a big position in spread option barrier reversal American no-touch interest rate euro swaptions, denominated in Turkish lira. According to my model, these Sobranies are pretty cheap. Lots of α, high κ, big Sharpe. Alden take $100 million face for the desk and his boss bought some for his own PA too.

Next day the broker offered us much more at the same price – great deal! Each day’s close I tell Alden how my model says to rehedge the Eurodollar futures and the lira, and then we execute. Except I am always thinking sadly about Lidia, dreaming of her capital assets. Will I ever know her efficient frontier?

Next week comes by the head of model risk, ENS graduate Dr Jean-Martin Geille, an expert in Malliavin calculus. And Vlad, chief risk modeller.
“Your VAR is way up, mon ami,” said J-M to Alden, very loud. “What model ‘ave you used for the Sobranies?”

My model is one-factor Monte Carlo with control variate, $125 from the web. Vlad’s is three-factor Crank-Nicolson PDE with fat tails and LU decomposition, he tells me, written in
Java on his Linux laptop. His say we have a lot less α than mine.

“You pay too much µ for too little κ!” say Vlad.

“What’s it all about, α?” Lidia sings in her deep voice. She cannot understand the situation is serious.

But J-M does. “I am arrestin’ you for ze future mis-markin’ of complex instruments,” he yells, waving his hands as he jumps in front of Alden.
He joke, but Alden doesn’t laugh. He knows J-M would do anything to make risk department look good. We are ε away from big trouble.

That night the risk committee uses Vlad’s model. Their report shows big drop in our marks. “No-one knows what this is really worth,” moans Alden.
“We’d better unwind and cut our losses. No Zermatt this Xmas ...” Bonus day is only a month away.

So much volatility is difficult to concentrate... At the close I execute the end-of-day Eurodollar hedge and leave lira rebalancing for next morning.

When I get to work Alden is popping.

“Did you hedge last night?” he yell.

“Eurodollars yes, lira no!” I say.

“Great!” shout Alden. “Trouble in the Middle East – 7 percentage point drop in the Turkish lira overnight. The Sobranies knocked in. How’d you guess?”

“I been learning extreme value theory,” I tell Alden.

“Good call, guy!” he say as he squeeze my shoulder.

The Sobranies triple and we close out. I make 20 units for the desk.

Lidia looks at me with new respect. On bonus day I invite her to dinner at Jean-Georges.

“How did you do it?” she smile at me over the Petrus ‘85.

I can see our implied correlation is approaching unity and I am ready to early exercise.

“Behavioural finance,” I tell Lidia as I take her hand. “The market is like a shy woman who suddenly find she’s beautiful: slow to passion but fiery when aroused...”

Soon perhaps I start my own market-neutral hedge fund, offshore. Meanwhile, I hope my story encourage your readers.

Yours,

D***** B*****

Emanuel Derman is a professor at Columbia University and a former head of the quantitative strategies group at Goldman Sachs. This is one in a series of quarterly columns.
Email: emanuel@ederman.com

對沖基金與信評

對沖基金與信評 Hedge Funds' Next Wrinkle: Ratings 對沖基金最近已經夠倒楣了, 現在又出現了下一個難關 --- 信評. 我有一個很聰明又很會賺錢的朋友Aaron在對沖基金作的很好, 他曾不只一次在閒談中擔心對沖基金的好景不再. (那...