In this fourth and final installment, we look at a variety of opportunities we are seeing across absolute return strategies today.

In this installment, we present our view that top decile hedge fund managers remain among the best available investments globally, without regard to the name “hedge fund.” We also look at how top managers continue to attract talent and capital, while underperforming managers contract, underscoring the importance of manager selection.

In the first part of the series, we looked at how traditional assets are facing headwinds for future returns from factors such as near-record valuations, historically low interest rates and credit spreads, and elevated risks. In the second part of the series we observe that, despite these challenges for traditional investments, tailwinds exist that we believe can contribute to alpha within absolute return strategies.

In the series, “The Case for Absolute Return Strategies” we discuss why we believe ARS investments are important components of a properly diversified portfolio. In this post, we look at indicators of how traditional asset markets are highly valued and future returns appear constrained.