Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 10:15AM

burnnn

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 10:15AM

yes, save for those well publicized flops, everything's dandy.

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 10:21AM

Hilarious... nice bess

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 10:40AM

HAM: Your comment was funny, but the reality is that in asset management being right maybe 60% of the time is considered good. Combining that insight with diversification (i.e using more than one manager) will enable an investor to prosper without taking on an unacceptable level of risk. Simple as that. Long Equities Guy

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 10:42AM

They're like an airplane without a partner!!

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 10:44AM

oh, and I might add that GS is right much more than 60% of the time. They are fierce competition. Long Equities Guy (not at GS)

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 10:45AM

10:40/10:13 is cracking my shit up this morning.

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 10:46AM

@10:45 Yeah, and while you're laughing GS is eating your breakfast and lunch.

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 10:49AM

@10:46 - try some Metamucil on the days when you don't have external help

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 10:51AM

fuck! 10:49 was meant for 10:45. sorry 10:46

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 11:31AM

1 After reviewing many GSAM investment statements, the performance is consistently equal to or worse than the S&P 500

2 GS has realized that a steading earnings stream can be realized from their GSAM division, so now they are goign to market the heck out of it

3 Stick to your knitting in prop trading, the world has enough bad asset managers

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 11:37AM

"the performance is consistently equal to or worse than the S&P 500" gives you away as an amateur.

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 12:49PM

Hey, dickwads:

How dare you compare our performance to the S&P500?! This isn't fucking Fidelity, you know, we don't use those commoner benchmarks. Any amateur can get equal to or worse than SPY performance, but takes a real fucking sophisticated investor to get that kind of return while paying 2and20 to the rocket scientists here at Goldman Sachs. This isn't some retail shit, it's institutional-quality mediocrity. We wouldn't even let you losers in, your money isn't good enough for us.

- Lloyd Blankfein

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 1:47PM

@12:49 Suppose it was a mid cap value portfolio for example. Would you compare that with the S&P 500 return? Who's a dickwad?

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 2:25PM

@1:47 - then please explain why the MSCI Midcap Value index is so often charted in comparison with the S&P500? The fact is that SPY is, for reasons of convention, the benchmark of benchmarks.

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 2:32PM

@2:25 I don't even know where to begin here. Not being smartassed - its just that you need to work on the basics. My advice is read and learn some more before you stick your neck out. Good place to start might be lotsoff.com, which is an asset management firm that publishes good index composition and comparison stats on its web site. Its ok to mouth off here cause what you're saying is anonomous. But try your goofy line of reasoning at a job interview and its gonna cost you. My good deed for the day.

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 3:02PM

@2:32 - All I'm saying is that SPY is a standard basis of comparison for all equity asset classes. If the Russell 2000 Value Index is doing well in a given year, this is often stated in terms of outperformance versus SPY.

This doesn't make much logical sense, but for historical reasons, SPY is the single most liquid and broadly followed index, and asset allocation strategists will regularly talk of investments in smallcap, midcap value, or other indices in terms of the additional opportunities they present over and above what they could from SPY.

AGG plays a similar role in the fixed-income world, it is the single broadest index, even though we all know that it is not a good benchmark for all portfolios.

Therefore, I don't see what's so silly about using SPY as a basis for comparison for all of GSAM's (equity) hedge funds. For a broad portfolio of funds, SPY (or the Wilshire 5000, which tracks SPY very closely) makes a lot of sense as a benchmark. If they're doing poorly against SPY, it's not like getting more fine-grained benchmarks is going to help their case.

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 3:04PM

Also, lotsoff.com is a web site for IBM's Lotus Notes product. Idiot.

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 3:07PM

@3.02--you sound gay

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 4:41PM

@3:04 - actually www.lotsoff.com is what you want. lotsoff.com appears to be the site they log into for their webmail. It's actually Lotsoff's screwup.

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 5:04PM

@3:07 No way he's gay. Gay boys on Wall Street are generally sharp - otherwise they would be chewed up and spit out and would land smack in the middle of one of the softer professions that are kinder to us gayuns. This guy is speaking in the most general of terms and stumbling. When you give an asset manager a mid cap mandate for example you compare him and hire and fire him based on his performance versus a mid cap index. Not the S&P 500. That differential shows your own skill in asset allocation, not the manager's skill at security selection, sector rotation, whatever. Come on, this is kids stuff. Do I sound gay? GAnalYst

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 5:28PM

good on ya pink. Damn, and here I thought I sounded like the most butch, beer drinking, dirty white hat, LAX playing, Hoboken-or-East-90s-living frat boy imaginable. I'll have to continue working on that. GAnalYst

Posted by guest , May 14, 2008 6:56PM

I think the confusion here is that 3:02 is thinking of benchmarking from the perspective of the asset owner (who's making an allocation decision) or an investment strategy guy choosing between different indices and regions to invest in, while everyone else is thinking in terms of fund managers working on very specific mandates. To the owner, the SPY is a good general benchmark to start with when making allocation decisions among fund types, while obviously the specific managers employed by him will be judged based on their performance relative to their benchmarks.

Which is to say that 3:02 probably has more money than anyone else on this thread.