Size Matters: Smaller Hedge Funds Are More Satisfied With Their Service Providers
Source: FINalternatives
Larger hedge funds are less satisfied with their service providers than smaller ones, according to a recent survey by FINalternatives. For example, hedge fund managers with less than $10 million in assets under management rated their administrators’ competence as excellent nearly 40% of the time, while those with between $10 million and $100 million did so more than 57% of the time. By contrast, the largest hedge funds—those with more than $500 million in assets—gave their administrators the highest competency ranking only 19% of the time, and almost 30% complained of poor competency. More...

Cioffi's Hero-to-Villain Hedge Funds Masked Bear Peril in CDOs
Source: Bloomberg
The two hedge funds that Ralph Cioffi managed were so hot that some investors had to call a friend at his firm, Bear Stearns Cos., to get his attention. Cioffi's employer and associates, dazzled by 40 consecutive months without a loss for one of the funds, invested at least $35 million of their own money with him. More...

Look Who Wants Hedge Fund Biz: BofA
Source: TheStreet.com
Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs (GS - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating), Morgan Stanley (MS - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) and Bear Stearns (BSC - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) have typically garnered much of the market in offering services for hedge fund clients, but observers say there is plenty of room for more competitors to infiltrate the nearly $2 trillion-asset market. More...

UPDATE 1-United Capital says hedge funds to stay open
Source: Reuters
United Capital Asset Management said on Tuesday it will continue operating its Horizon Strategy group hedge funds that invested in subprime-mortgage bonds after temporarily halting payments to investors. More...

More of Today's Stories continued below...  or  Today's Stories unabridged on the web

John Hussman: A Simple Model to Sidestep Risk and Capture Returns
Source: SeekingAlpha
Investors need not take market risk at all times (or even a majority of the time) to capture the long-term return of the stock market. What is needed most is the avoidance of deep losses. It also helps to be willing to accept market exposure when valuations are depressed and other investors are bearish -- particularly when yield pressures are falling. Indeed, there are numerous investment approaches that would have outperformed the market over time with less risk than a buy-and-hold strategy -- the work is to find those that have good theoretical underpinnings and aren't just hindsight. More...

Silver-Bullet Investing
Source: The Motley Fool
Market volatility can give even the most risk-tolerant investors a bad case of the willies, so it's worth remembering that stuffing money under a mattress carries risk, too: Thanks -- or no thanks, really -- to pesky inflation, a mattress account will lose value year in and year out, and it will drag your purchasing power down with it. More...

Emerging Markets Push Stocks Up
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Soaring emerging markets led non-U.S. stocks higher, despite nervousness as the second quarter ended.

Investors, especially in the U.S. and Europe, have become concerned about the U.S. mortgage market, higher Treasury yields and increases in interest rates around the world. This caused major European markets to give up some of their gains, after touching records in June. More...

Rogers Says He's Sold Emerging Markets, Except China (Update3)
Source: Bloomberg
Jim Rogers, who predicted the start of the global commodities rally in 1999, said he's sold out of all emerging markets with the exception of China because they're "over-exploited.'' More...