Well, Global Alpha has seen better days. Anyone get the sense that this was a few years too late? Or is that just us?
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS.N) said the heads of its computer-driven investments and Global Alpha, once the bank’s largest hedge fund, retired on Tuesday.
Departing were Mark Carhart and Raymond Iwanowski, who helped run Global Alpha and a group that managed quantitative investments. They left the bank along with research co-head Giorgio De Santis, the bank said.
The departures follow two years of disappointing performance at Global Alpha, where assets fell to $2.5 billion last year from a peak of $12 billion in 2007.
All that glitters IS Goldman Sachs. Sorry to burst your bubble, you GS rejects,
b1tches
can someone explain to me what lighting in a bottle they have in East Setauket that no one else can replicate, no matter what resources they have available to throw at the problem?
retiring is the new “Killing It”
They forgot to model a risk factor or five.
At least they can buy a Ford…..
I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.
-JS
I am looking for a job as a portfolio manager for a large and successful hedge fund.
I can guarantee annualized returns of -50%
Kindly contact my recruiter for further details
12 -> 2.5, “disappointing” indeed
Say what you will about them, these were truly classy, humble guys. That is all.
If Buffett even knew who these guys were, he’d be laughing his ass off.
Hey Mark, here’s a great story to tell: You were once a high flyer, but you were actually fooled by randomness. Now go back to the CRSP database and see if you can tease out some other relationship that will help you outperform yesterday not tomorrow.
@2
There’s a few other guys who’ve been actually killing it for 10, 20+ years, some of whom *gasp* aren’t quants!
@2 Possible Ponzi by Phds?
Surprised they lasted that long. Global Alpha performed horribly in 2007, let alone 2008.
@2 (money)resources!=brains
Surprised they lasted that long. Global Alpha performed horribly in 2007, let alone 2008.
How have Global Alpha’s predecessors been doing – AQR performance for ’09, anyone?
Anal_yst,
Fair enough, but do you know of any decent sized shop ($B+) that have produced even remotely similar gross returns over the last 10+ years (include 2008).
Anybody know what Global Alpha’s numbers were in 2008? Wasn’t it up a bunch mid year?
I believe it was up about 8% in 2008. -35% in 2007 may have been horrible at the time, but given how many funds did worse in 2008 it’s not that bad a 2-year track record compared to many others
I’ve met Ray before and he’s an incredibly smart and humble guy amid the sea of douchebags that is Goldmine Sucks.
Now they can setup their hedge fund.
It sounds like they are leaving to start a hedge fund some time in the future. Mark was promoted over Bob Jones post the Global Alpha problems and the year hasn’t been _that_ bad for them. Who knows, though?
And they hired a woman to take over Global Alpha? Guys – if you still have any money in there TAKE IT OUT NOW!
AQR ARF is up high single digits this year but did horribly in 08 (worse than GA).
@12: it’s all their own money so Ponzi is ruled out
@20: haven’t met Ray but I have met both Mark and Giorgio. While the latter is pretty humble, the former, at least at the time when GA was doing spectacularly, was as much a d-bag as anyone in the investment community.
AQR ARF was down 50% in 2008
just like the stock market you can’t go down forever
Former GA fund investor here. Iwanoski was a decent guy, and relatively introspective. Carhart was a full blown windbag in the best Cliff Asness mold. GSAM basically hogged up any assets they could, pushing GA and the other funds way beyond natural capacity, and they levered far too much to compensate for below normal levels of vol and dispersion. Running the long-only business alongside also did not help, as it had to have hurt GA trading execution even if they wouldn’t admit it.
Had many conversations with GSAM staff in spring/summer of 2007, and all (including Peter Kraus) were disingenuous at best, outright lying at worst, about what was going on at GSAM. We took our money out, which turned out to be the right thing to do, but as clients we were treated very poorly the whole time. It would be truly difficult to be less professional than GSAM was during that period.
26 Why is this news? As a fund investor, you must know that there are decent guys and windbags everywhere but unfortunately those traits don’t correlate at all with delivering performance versus objectives.