Vidrio Blog

In the current pandemic environment, while some of the funds that asset allocators are invested with are finding ways to profit, many funds are performing poorly. Some will close as a result. Across the board, we see allocators needing to redeem and reallocate as turbulent market conditions persist. 

Covid-19 and a crash in the oil markets have triggered a bear market that may lead to a recession. While the complexion of this bear market is different from 2008-9, there are applicable lessons from the last recession that can be helpful to Allocators in 2020.

Year after year, Agecroft does an excellent job bringing together a mix of funds, allocators, and service providers for their hedge fund allocator conference. Here are the top takeaways from Agecroft's "Gaining the Edge" in 2019:

Vidrio is a Technology Enabled Service for fund allocators. We collect a full range of data from external managers for our clients so they can focus on more value-added tasks. We use all this data to power a range of functions that let fund allocators live on one screen to perform research, portfolio management, and operational tasks. We offer unrivaled depth in data servicing and cutting-edge technology for managers of managers.

Vidrio is the first Technology Enabled Service for allocators. We’re also undoubtedly the oldest. The origins of Vidrio go back to 1994 when we established one of the early funds of hedge funds. Along the way, we developed technology to support portfolios that allocate to external managers of all types and transferred the data collection staffing and processes we used to create the innovative technology enabled service we offer today.

Investment managers traditionally develop custom internal technology or implement multiple vendor solutions to manage their investments. Historically, these were the only products that could provide mature products across all mission-critical parts of the business. They were supported by a costly technology teams trained to support very specific use cases. These solutions were expensive and tend to decays as soon as they were implemented.

For investors placing money with hedge funds, calculating the risk of these investments is a multi-faceted problem.

Some risk elements, like standard deviation, are relatively easy to calculate: track performance over time and see how widely performance swings to the positive and negative. Other risks, like Greeks and VaR based on the derivative holdings of funds, are far more difficult as they require both transparency to the actual holdings of the fund, and advanced calculation models to generate results.