What makes a great hedge fund manager tick?
The Johnson School’s Alternative Investment Club invited Katherine Burton, reporter and author of Hedge Hunters: Hedge Fund Masters on the Rewards, the Risk, and the Reckoning, to discuss her book as well as the state of the troubled hedge fund industry at the Cornell Club in New York City. Thanks to its reputation for achieving spectacular returns for investors, the hedge fund industry ballooned from under $500 billion in 2000 to an estimated $1.9 trillion in assets at the start of 2008, managed by a vastly larger stable of investment professionals. But 2008 has proved to be especially precarious for these fund managers, as the global credit crisis crimped borrowing capacity and market volatility went to extremes. Even before hedge funds were gripped by these particular challenges, managers were finding it tougher to navigate the waters because the industry has gotten so large. As the space became more crowded, it got increasingly difficult to produce the outstanding investment result
