Has AQR beat the market?

[Maverick2608]

AQR is offering products to those who are trying to diversify risk away from the index. There is no point then in comparing the returns to the index. To say the investors would have been better just holding SPY makes no sense when that is exactly what they are trying to not do.

I agree of course that the performance of for instance a neutral long short fund should not be compared to the market return. However, AQR still need to deliver a positive return sizeable enough to justify the risk. My question is: Have AQR on average achieved that? Are they worth what investors have paid for their service?

 

[Nobert]

countless number of rich portfolio managers out there who can't beat the S&P, let alone their strategy benchmark. I recently spoke to a friend who works at an asset management firm where the fund he is involved with has an annualized return of 1.7% for the past 10 years and this fund has more than $10 billion in client assets.

It's all about who's in bed with who through the old boys network (ie. pension funds)

I looked into a lot of institutional trades recently.

Sometimes it looks, that some of those people have, absolutely-no-clue and no skill, based on what they're doing.

Same name. 4 different institutions.

Twin Peaks theme kicks in.

,,If you think that after finishing finance studies you're going to be an active traders, you a very wrong.
You will be selling police and firefighter pension funds, back and forth''


Generational wealth lasts from 3 to 5 generations. Basically the grand-children/grand-grandchildren are equal to those who have won a lottery.
Easy to understand, why someone would choose Fisher as their manager instead of Howard Marks.

 

[R1234]

I looked into a lot of institutional trades recently.

Sometimes it looks, that some of those people have, absolutely-no-clue and no skill, based on what they're doing.

Totally agree. In many instances, home based traders have a hightened sense of survival and visceral sense for risk because if they get it wrong, they end up homeless.

The instutitional types may have quant risk modelling etc but they are playing with someone else's money in the end and the consequences are not as stark.

 

[HobbyTrading]

I agree of course that the performance of for instance a neutral long short fund should not be compared to the market return. However, AQR still need to deliver a positive return sizeable enough to justify the risk. My question is: Have AQR on average achieved that? Are they worth what investors have paid for their service?

Maybe those investors were not looking for a positive return, but wanted a tool to reduce the volatility of their total portfolio. AQR might be the one who provides that tool. In those cases those investors might be willing to pay (i.e. giving up a positive return) to get a lower portfolio volatility.

 

[Maverick2608]

I think we/I should look for a hopefully long term record of their neutral long value short growth strategy fund performance to be able to evaluate whether AQR has produced a valuable product.

This is what they started out with at the end og the 90s so a long term record must exist.