Dominic Basulto discusses D-I-Y Hedge Funds:
During Steinhardt’s hedge fund heyday, fewer than 500 funds dominated the industry. Now, there are nearly 10,000 funds with more than $1.5 trillion under management. As a result, hedge fund strategies have infiltrated every corner of the investment industry. Seemingly every day, retail investors are introduced to new opportunities that didn’t exist 10 years ago. Heck, these opportunities — like new “mini-futures” for playing the commodities boom — didn’t even exist 30 days ago. At one time, the average investor needed a minimum of $1 million to play in the high-stakes hedge fund world. Today, it’s possible to construct a do-it-yourself hedge fund or buy an off-the-shelf hedge fund for less than $2,000. The hedge fund genie, as they say, is out of the bottle.