While we have already noted the backlash against hedge funds as a result of their chronic underperformance of the market over the past 5 years, resulting in first Calpers and now Texas Pensions to pull money out of the asset class, the reality is that in a micro-managed world in which the Fed itself is the Chief Risk Officer of the S&P 500, there is no need to actively manage assets – after all the money printer itself is doing so on behalf of everyone. However, it is not just highly paid hedge funds – paid highly to hedge risk which simply does not exist until such time as central banks lose control – but pension, mutual and virtually every other class of actively managed money will underperform the S&P as long as the central banks are actively pushing asset values higher (and when they stop watch out below because no amount of shorts or puts will offset the carnage that will result).
And yet some, such as Pension funds, have a specific bogey they have to hit every single year, in order to maintain a mandated increase in their assets or else suffer the wrath of disgruntled pensioners and overseers.
Which probably explains why as Pension360 reports, the Chief Investment Officer of one such pension fund decided to do the unthinkable: daytrade, i.e. gamble, its assets, which happen to be the lifetime savings of hard workers who just happen to be naive enough to believe their retirement money is entrusted into safe hands. Little did they know that instead they have handed the fruit of their lives’ labor over to the E-trade baby.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 09/19/2014.
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