Hedge Funds: A Parallel Narrative Analysis

Jordan Belfort is the notorious 1990’s stockbroker who saw himself earning fifty million dollars a year operating a penny stock boiler room from his Stratton Oakmont, Inc. brokerage firm. Corrupted by drugs, money, and sex he went from being an innocent twenty – two year old on the fringe of a new life to manipulating the system in his infamous “pump and dump” scheme. As a stock swindler, he would motivate his young brokers through insane presentations to rile them up as they defrauded investors with duplicitous stock sales. Toward the end of this debauchery tale he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering for which he was sentenced to twenty – two months in prison as well as recompensing two – hundred million in

shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than 25 years, or both.

This book brought out the failures of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in America’s history, as orchestrated by Bernie Madoff. Harry Markopolos caught up with Madoff’s Ponzi scheme earlier on in his career and saw all the red flags. There was no explanation of the continuous one percent yield in over forty five stocks that Madoff dealt with. Madoff took advantage of the laxity by the SEC officials in failing to follow up complains with an investigation, and the trust

Due to the nature of hedge funds of carrying high risk and large assets, these changes in supervision will allow the FDIC to hold advisers to more severe reporting requirements forcing them to provide the Securities and Exchange Committee and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation with the information necessary to evaluate the private funds’ systematic risk.

In modern society, the “trust fund train wreck” gets a lot of attention and publicity. Consider the Hilton sisters; they gained fame (and already had their hands on fortune) through seriously convoluted channels. As granddaughters of the Hilton Hotels founder, Conrad Hilton, Paris and Nicky waltzed through their strange childhoods modeling, acting and…shopping. They wandered into adulthood with their very own spotlights shining on their day-to-day activities. It didn’t matter if they were questionable or noteworthy or special. All of America wanted to watch the trust fund train wreck to see what would become of it in the real world.

To combat this assumption it turns out large amounts of money of the value of $300million was invested in Bernard Madoff accounts in the form of pension funds. Some officials knew that the unscathed performance of Madoff securities were too good to be true as their prices consistently climbed up in spite the financial crisis. However, still they pawned its own shareholders’ funds with the hopes of jumping on the same band wagon as Madoff and reaping further profits. Another angle at probing the case was that the CEO, directors as well as executives were only looking out for themselves. Evidently they had direct benefits in the form of handsome compensation packages for retaining high profile clients such as Madoff and Wise which

Hedge fund managers have started to embrace the use of blockchain technology to facilitate investment and process optimization. Several private investment funds have spearheaded the implementation of blockchain technology and smart

Investors lost their money because of their lack of conscious and unwillingness to understand or realize that it is impossible to have such high returns in a legally managed

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The case of the Investment Detective laid out the cash flows for us in each of eight different projects. Before doing any calculations we came up with the assumption that we could not rank the projects simply by inspecting the cash flows.

My experience at Villanova, both as a research fellow and a student was formative of my fascination with investments, hedge funds, and mutual funds. My original interest sparked while working with Dr. Velthuis and performing literature reviews on effects of corporate activism on stock prices, and size effects on hedge fund returns. Since then, classes in Portfolio Theory and

Hedge funds feature returns different from those of mutual funds. The different trading strategies and investment styles are amongst a few factors that explain the difference (Boyson, 2010). The institutional and individual investors create a common pool of funds and employ professional managers to manage the fund. Ideally the manager is compensated from two sets of fees: management fee and performance fee. They impose a management fee based on the size of the asset managed, usually at the rate between 1-2%. A performance fee will be imposed at the rate between 20-30% of the returns on the investments made (lecture notes).

Hedge funds are investment vehicles that explicitly pursue absolute returns on their underlying investments. Hedge Fund incorporate to any absolute return fund investing within the financial markets (stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, derivatives, etc) and/or applying non-traditional portfolio management techniques including, but not restricted to, shorting, leveraging, arbitrage, swaps, etc. Hedge funds can invest in any number of strategies. Hedge fund managers typically invest money of their own in the fund they manage, which serves to align their interests with

Peloton’s winning strategy was effective in 2006 and allowed Peloton Partners to become one of the top hedge funds in the country. Ron Beller, the head of the company bet against the United States housing market. Before the subprime crisis hit the country, and people started to default on their mortgage, Beller was able to earn a healthy return by taking a short position on the housing market. The objective was to invest in the mortgage as the banks were issuing mortgages to a large number of people irrespective of their credit history. The investment in mortgage paid around 80% return in 2007

Mutual funds are an easy, convenient way to invest, without having to worry about choosing individual stocks. A mutual fund can be defined as a single portfolio of stocks, bonds, and/or cash managed by an investment company on behalf of many investors. The investment company manages the fund, and sells shares in the fund to individual investors. When one invests in a mutual fund, they become a part-owner of a large investment portfolio, along with all the other shareholders of the fund. The fund manager invests the contributions when shares are purchased, along with money from the other shareholders. Every day, the fund manager counts up the value of all the fund's holdings, figures out how many shares have been purchased by