Nice Hedge Fund Managers Finish Last? Maybe Not

We all know nice guys finish last. This is particularly true when it comes to high finance and hedge fund managers. It's a dog eat dog world and only the most ruthless hedge fund managers make it to the top right? Wrong. 

At least according to a new study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

According to this new research, hedge fund managers that show signs of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy actually underperform their peers. Sure, it's only underperformance of  1%, but this is still welcome news to the optimists among us.

Researchers at UC Berkeley and University of Denver attempted to measure the personality traits of over 100 hedge funds managers. They then compared this with 10 years of performance data. They found those with psychopathic traits underperformed in terms of annualized and risk-adjusted returns.

Of course, the sample size is rather small, representing just a few percent of US hedge fund managers. 

Still, the study also is supported by similar research that shows those who display courage, justice, and humanity tend to be the most effective leaders. 

So much fund data...

A New Way to Search Private Funds

Ever tried searching EDGAR records for fund data? Then you're probably have faced the frustration of trying to find anything useful. Not that it's surprising the SEC uses a outdated search form that makes it difficult to find the information your searching for. But still... one would think with million dollar budgets the SEC could make the data a bit more user-friendly. 

Maybe you've:

1) Searched for a specific fund/company information, only to find the data is spread across dozens of different forms...making it tiresome to find the data you're looking for.

2) Attempted to search for funds based on size, investment strategy, number of accounts, pooled investments etc. only to find that none of these are valid search criteria.

3) Wanted to sort or filter results to find the specific companies or people you're looking for...only to find this too is not an option with the SEC's EDGAR database.

Well, finally there is a solution.  A new company has launched that allows you to search records from more than 6,000 fund managers, 20,000 private funds, and more than 30,000 fund employees.

Anyone who has ever used the EDGAR database will find Private Fund Data to be a very welcome relief to the old days of painstakingly combing through SEC data. The search function is extremely intuitive and the results are clearly organized. 

As a test, we searched funds with more than $1 billion in assets in New York. It returned 145 results. 

We also tried searching real estate funds with a minimum investment of $50,000 or less. Instantly 749 results!

You could never do searches this way with EDGAR.

It's free to use (though after a certain amount of searches you will be prompted to sign up for a paid plan with unlimited searches) and its a far far better alternative to EDGAR.

Private Fund Data