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November 03, 2011 at 01:11 PM
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A roundtable discussion moderated by AdvisorOne’s Jamie Green at the Schwab Impact 2011 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday tackled the increasing use of alternative investments by advisors and clients.
The roundtable featured participants from major alternative investment suppliers and included Andy O’Rourke and John Cadigan of Direxion Funds; Bob Worthington of Hatteras Funds; Brian Watson of SteelPath, and Rick Lake of Aston/Lake Partners LASSO Fund.
“The protesters represent a generation disenfranchised with equities and long-only strategies,” Cadigan began, referencing the Occupy Wall Street movement and sympathetic splinter protests in major cities throughout the country. “It’s a challenge for clients and advisors, but an educational opportunity for the industry.”
Cadigan added that baby boomers are transferring from wealth accumulation to distribution, and many are shying away from equities “given what recently happened, and advisors have well over 50% or so of their portfolios in fixed income. The strategies we represent help prevent the drawdown of their assets.”
Lake said the people with whom he speaks are concerned about three things: risk management, returns and diversification.
“In risk management, they want a smoother ride,” Lake explained. “With return, they are desperate for a source of returns in an unkind world. With diversification, they receive better risk-adjusted returns with our strategies than many traditional sources. We’re trying to get them away from, ‘What was up yesterday, and am I in it?’”
Worthington added that the advisors he speaks with want to mitigate risk and reduce volatility. They know volatility isn’t going away, at least in the foreseeable future, and alternatives are a hedge against volatility. But Worthington said he sees confusion on the part of advisors as to how to get returns versus a long-only strategy.
“They will use more alternatives, mainly in hedging strategies, but they will still need to deliver more return, and they’re still concerned about where those sources will come from,” he said.
“There is frustration with the markets, where clients think, ‘The more I get in total return the better, but I want it with less sensitivity to the S&P 500,’” Watson added. “That’s what we offer. We’re trying to validate that low risk aspect by buying managers that have low risk strategies.”
Green then asked participants if advisors were worried about fees and if they’re pushing back against the costs associated with alternative products and strategies.
Worthington said price is less of an issue with those vehicles with whucg advisors are familiar, and the industry will probably continue to reduce fees. Two-thirds of the advisors with whom Worthington speaks don’t mention fees, but the other one-third does. Whether or not fees come up is directly tied to the advisor’s previous exposure to alternatives, he suggested.
“Three weeks ago I was at a conference where the advisors were trying to benchmark alpha in the traditional space with beta, and then comparing that to alternatives,” Cadigan said. “So there is a lack of understanding in the alternative space about the nuances in various exposures, let alone fees. What they really need is education on the various products and the competency of the managers managing those products.”
O’Rourke noted a two-tiered sales process. The first is to define alternative investments. The second is to then set expectations as to how alternatives will perform in certain markets. This second tier, he noted, is the harder of the two.
Cadigan added that investors want to see how alternatives would have performed in the 1980s and 1990s.
“The reality is the 1980s and 1990s were aberrations, so it wouldn’t be accurate,” he said.
“In a way it’s a very good time to be selling theses products because so many people still have recent memories of how the markets performed,” during 2008-2009, O’Rourke added.
