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Islam and the West: Why it needn't be war By Peter Watson Is bloody conflict inevitable between Islamic fundamentalism and the West? No, says our correspondent — because Islam has a long tradition of modernisers willing to embrace Western thought, and we should be encouraging their...

That's the crux - who are "they"? Because what worries us is that "they" are very, very obviously not the vast majority of the population of Iraq, Palestine, or even Afghanistan. I absolutely, wholeheartedly, 100% agree with you that if we as military western powers could identify terrorist...

I think the problem is that some people don't believe that countering terrorism is best achieved by invading places. That doesn't mean that those people think terrorists are great guys or that their threat should be ignored. You make a very good point when you say that this conbflict is the...

Who are we? Just human beings, same as you. That's not pompous or self-righteous - not being a citizen of the world's superpower does not make your views and rights irrelevant. Empires fall when they become arrogant and overreach their power. Happened to Rome, happened to us. I'm not sure I...

Liking someone doesn't mean you have to think everything they do is right though, does it? I mean, I've got friends who act like idiots when they're drunk, and I try to help them correct their mistakes. I think a lot of what some Americans see as "anti-Americanism" is not that at all - if we are...

Franz Ferdinand are good, but they're Scottish, not English. Another good one is Stellastarr, well worth hearing.

Does anyone have any views on the CBOT Bund, Bobl and Schatz launch? Any possibility that they'll attract volume? What's the purpose of the launch?

I think there's two points there. Firstly, you can argue that there just isn't enough profit to be made, or enough competent asset managers, so whatever way money gets managed a lot of it will be done badly. I guess that might be true. If it is, well, we're stuck with it. Better hope you can...

My point remains: if competing asset management styles consistently produce better returns, and old style long only managers continue to fail to produce enough to support people in their retirement, they will fall by the wayside. Demand will wither - how can it be any other way?

Also not true. Benchmarking makes mediocrity the goal. There are numerous ways to judge absolute return (the most significant being "does it provide acceptable or good retirement income?"). The nonsense lies in asset managers claiming good performance when they are down 25%+ in a year...

The counterargument to what you're saying is if mutual funds continue to produce poor/nil/negative returns. It's all very well "trusting" your fund manager, but if your fund manager's five/ten year performance projects out to a pension annuity figure of "not enough to live on" then you're pretty...

Indeed. If your analysis is right and you like it at $11 then you ought to like it even more at $9, and buy more. Of course, if you were wrong in the first place...

I'm pretty sure Man have some retail funds or at least vehicles that allow retail investments into hedge funds.

Not picking a fight here because I think a lot of what you've said is quite right, but that is just not true. I've met dozens of FOF managers and believe me, it's a competitive market in terms of them attracting assets and they can't afford to be political in how they distribute their money...

Interestingly, Quadriga's status illustrates a significant difference between US and European regulations. In Europe CTAs are considered to be hedge funds, and as such subject to the same regulatory regime. In the US, CTAs are a different classification, and while most do not choose to target...

It's not, I understand it fine. I was just trying to explain the two types of "closed".

It may sound stupid, but there is a major difference between a fund that is closed in the sense of taking no new money and one that is closed as in no longer operational. The former tends to imply success, that the manager has reached the capacity of that strategy. The latter suggests poor...

The name is MAR, as I said previously. As to issue number I may look that up tomorrow. November or December 2003. You should ask more nicely :p .

I don't work there anymore. I could go over to the other side of the office and look it up but I'm off to the pub in a minute so I'm not gonna do that :eek: . End of last year, probably November or December edition.

Risk adjusted? The article was in MAR, can't remember which issue.