How the Hedge Fund Cloud Can Restore the Industry’s Mojo
By Peter Curley of Xignite
The last few years have been undeniably tough for the once brash hedge fund industry. Recent headlines do not suggest any improvement with August being the worst month for hedge funds since October 2008, and marquee firms like Paulson & Company firm down 34% year-to-date. Prior to the crisis of 2008, the industry appeared to be on a steady upward trajectory, evolving from a small, scrappy upstart, that catered to high net worth investors, to a more formalized $2 trillion industry, that serviced the largest pension funds in the world. Since the crisis, however, the industry seems to have lost its way. What exactly happened and how can what we term the “Hedge Fund Cloud” return the industry to its former glory?Institutionalize or Die
Pre-crisis, managers believed that the measure of success was not only returns but assets under management. In their race to acquire new assets, managers were motivated to “institutionalize” their infrastructure so that they could go after the really big allocations from large pension funds and endowments. For many firms this institutionalization meant leaving the relative simplicity of their single prime relationship to the much more complex world of building out their own multi-prime infrastructure. Almost overnight managers found themselves running complex and unwieldy businesses. Seemingly simple operations like adding a strategy, that required a new asset-class, or producing a new report, became long and involved IT projects. Any thought of outsourcing any of this burden was dismissed because of perceived privacy and control concerns.
Prisoners of their own Hedge fund Infrastructure
The actual crisis further exposed the inflexibility of hedge funds’ infrastructures. Managers struggled to view their true exposure across asset classes and multi-prime relationships. Just when managers most needed their former agility they discovered that they had become prisoners of their own expensive infrastructures.
Fast forward to today. We are still experiencing the after effects of the crisis. A strong regulatory backlash response has been unavoidable. There is still tremendous uncertainly about the true impact of these new regulations, but what is certain, is that the business of running a hedge fund will become even more complex and costly.
How can the industry remove itself from this funk and prepare itself for the next crisis? The answer is that the industry needs to return to basics by once again making alpha generation its sole focus. The industry needs to regain its former investment agility. In short, managers need to get out of the running-a-hedge-fund business and get back to the investment business.
The Hedge Fund Cloud to the Rescue
Fortunately, the Hedge Fund Cloud offers managers the opportunity to get back to basics. The Hedge Fund Cloud allows firms to focus on alpha generation by moving all non-core infrastructure to the cloud. The Hedge Fund Cloud is made up of the fast-maturing ecosystem of cloud-based hedge fund service providers who have now begun to offer institutional-grade infrastructure.
The three main components of the Hedge Fund Cloud are as follows:
1 – Hedge Fund Cloud – Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
SaaS means that software can now be accessed through a thin client or browser, from anywhere, as a service. SaaS includes upgrades, disaster recovery, and is paid for on a subscription model. Many of the important hedge fund systems including execution management, order management, risk management, portfolio management are now available from the leading providers on a Software-as-a-Service basis.
2 – Hedge Fund Cloud – Data-as-a-Service (DaaS)
DaaS delivers financial market and reference data via web services or API’s rather than the traditional data feeds and flat files. This approach allows firms the ability to query and use just specific subsets of data rather than downloading and storing masses of data. It also means that firms do not have to build out data management infrastructures.
3 – Hedge Fund Cloud – Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
IaaS involves the outsourcing of physical hardware such as telephony, storage, servers, and networking components.
To take advantage of this new model, managers must now take an impartial eye to their existing hedge fund infrastructures and ask themselves what really is vital to alpha generation. Everything else should be stripped away, moved to the cloud, and essentially turned into a utility. This return to basics offers the industry the best chance to get back to the pre-crisis glory days and to restore its mojo.
This guest post was submitted by Peter Curley of Xignite a hedge fund market and reference data provider.
