John Longo, a Professor of Finance at Rutgers Business School Newark/New Brunswick, was recently interviewed by Reuters for an article about a new mutual fund. Gottex Fund Management, a hedge fund firm, has launched a mutual fund that will open asset classes for retail clients that have been previously reserved for millionaires. The Gottex Endowment Strategy Fund will include hedge funds, real estate, and private equity.
Professor Longo provided some advice for consumers who might be interested in investing in the Gottex Fund. Longo observed “Investing in hedge funds makes sense now, but it is also important to compare prices.”
The new fund seeks to meet investors’ demand for portfolios that are less correlated to the broader markets. The senior managing director of Gottex and the chief investment officer of the Gottex Endowment Strategy Fund, William Landes, claimed that the fund will be modeled after endowments with average annual returns of 12.9 percent over the past 20 years, a higher rate of return than the 8 percent average annual return that stocks-and-bond portfolios provided over the same period. Landes stated “this will allow investors to get access to a wide range of markets, trading strategies, and alternative investments in a controlled environment.”
Mutual funds like the Gottex fund have become more popular in recent years. Golman Sachs researchers claim that there are approximately 400 of these liquid alternatives funds on the market. A recent Goldman study suggested that investors may invest as much as $2 trillion dollars into liquid alternatives funds over the next five to ten years.