Over the past several years we have repeatedly stated that despite protests to the contrary, the single biggest factor explaining the underperformance of the active community in general, and hedge funds in particular, has been the ubiquitous influence of the Fed and other central banks over the capital markets, coupled with the prevasive presence of quantitative strategies, HFTs, algo trading and more recently, a surge in price-indescriminate purchases by passive, ETF managers.
Specifically, back in October 2015, we wrote that “as central planning has dominated every piece of fundamental news, and as capital flows trump actual underlying data (usually in an inverse way, with negative economic news leading to surging markets), the conventional asset management game has been turned on its head. We have said this every single year for the past 7, and we are confident that as long as the Fed and central banks double as Chief Risk Officers for the market, “hedge” funds will be on an accelerated path to extinction, quite simply because in a world where a central banker’s money printer is the best and only “hedge” (for now), there is no reason to fear capital loss – after all the bigger the drop, the greater the expected central bank response according to classical Pavlovian conditioning.”
Several years later, Goldman Sachs confirmed that we were correct. In a note released this April, Goldman’s Robert Boroujerdi asked in a slide titled “Does Active Have A QE Hangover” and showed that the current run of active manager underperformance began shortly after the onset of QE.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jul 10, 2017.
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