Skënderbeg Alternative Investments AG, Seestrasse 17, 8702 Zollikon, Switzerland T +41 43 544 11 30, info@skenderbeg.ch, www.skenderbeg.ch

Put into perspective Ahead of the mainstream

September 2017 Written by Bruno J. Schneller, CAIA & Miranda Ademaj Contents:

• Hedge funds (page 3)

• Markets (page 8)

• Think tank (page 13)

• Time out (page 16)

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"If governments stopped doing all the stuff they don't need to do, they might be better at doing the stuff they do need to do."

– Daniel Hannan

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Hedge fund density is historically elevated & hedge fund crowding increased slightly

Goldman Sachs

Hedge fund portfolio turnover rose slightly but remains low

Goldman Sachs

Equity exposure of hedge fund strategies

Credit Suisse

Report: Hedge fund managers get optimistic

Hedge fund managers appear to be more optimistic about the fundraising and return environment than they were a year ago, according to Preqin's "Hedge Fund Manager Outlook". Just 30 percent of managers surveyed by Preqin said the fundraising environment is tougher than it was a year ago, versus nearly half of all fund managers saying that at this time last year. Accordingly, some 47 percent of managers surveyed said they have a positive outlook on the hedge fund industry for the second half of the year. One reason for the optimism is improved perfor-mance. Two thirds of fund managers surveyed reported meeting or beating their funds' return objectives in 2017, per Preqin.

Institutional Investor

HEDGE FUNDS

Put into perspective – September 2017

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Cyclical vs. defensive exposure

JP Morgan

Hedge Fund Barometer and CS Hedge Fund Index returns

Credit Suisse

+$17Bn into quant equity & -$44Bn out of fundamental equity, over past 2 years

Morgan Stanley

The hot new hedge fund flavor is "Quantamental"

Fundamental and quantitative investing used to be the hedge-fund versions of oil and water: They didn't mix. Those in the fundamental camp do analysis the old-fashioned way, evaluating investments based on research and instinct, with humans calling the shots. Quantitative money managers turn to sophisticated computer algorithms that search mountains of data for hidden signals and then make rapid-fire in-vestment decisions. A middle ground has recently emerged: "quantamental" investing, a merger of computer and human-based decision making. It's not yet clear whether the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Bloomberg Businessweek

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As short sellers target Chinese companies in Hong Kong, hostility mounts

Short sellers are increasingly targeting Hong Kong-listed Chinese companies they allege have committed accounting tricks, market manipula-tion and fraud. And that's despite mounting hostility faced by investors who bet against stocks. Those betting against companies encounter a bitter response from their targets, as well as from the shareholders in those companies and from the Chinese authorities. The short sellers say the backlash can come in the form of litigation, smear campaigns, arrests, hacking of their information, surveillance, physical assault and death threats - against them, their staff and even their families.

Reuters

Do activist hedge funds target female CEOs? The role of CEO gender in hedge fund activism

Bill Francis Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) – Lally School of Management & Technology

Yinjie (Victor) Shen Cleveland State University-Monte Ahuja College of Business

Qiang Wu Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) – Lally School of Management

Abstract: Inspired by recent academic advancement as well as real-world cases and media fervor on hedge fund activism, we investigate whether, how and why activist hedge funds are more likely to target companies led by female CEOs. Using a comprehensive dataset, we first confirm that activist hedge funds indeed regard female CEOs as preferred targets. We then report findings suggesting that the plausible cause for such a gender-specific focus is differences in managerial style between male and female CEOs: instead of being self-defensive, fe-male CEOs are more likely to communicate and cooperate with activist hedge fund managers. Further analysis reveals that, although female-led targets experience a greater increase in operational efficiency, female CEOs themselves are still more likely to be replaced, suggesting a puzzling bias.

SSRN

Smaller firms remain the lifeblood of the hedge fund industry

By Jack Inglis, CEO, Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA)

The hedge fund industry comprises two branches. One includes firms managing $1bn or more in assets. This group's star managers feature regularly in the pages of The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. It contains about 10% of the industry in terms of the number of firms, but manages about 90% of the assets. Much attention focuses on this group - the "billion-dollar club". Industry research and perfor-mance indices tend to be skewed to the larger firms. Consultants' lists of approved hedge funds are dominated by the larger brands. Many of this group's constituents are big institutionalized businesses whose clients include some of the largest institutional investors in the world, such as sovereign wealth funds and public sector pensions. The second branch contains firms that each run less than $1 billion in hedge fund assets. Their investors can include large institutions but family offices, funds of funds and private banking assets are more prevalent. These are small businesses led by entrepreneurs. They are often the cradle of the industry's innovations, being able to invest in niche markets with-out capacity concerns. Frequently, they are among the industry's best-performers. Yet the press, in general, tends to look elsewhere. The gaze of many investors, too, can be drawn to larger brand names. In some cases, this is because they are unable to allocate to smaller funds due to size limitations. Other factors can include infrastructure demands, length of track record and other checklist items that can be difficult for some smaller managers to meet.

The bifurcation in the industry is nothing new, but the concentration of assets among the largest firms has become steadily more apparent since the financial crisis. Hedge fund firms with $5 billion or more now manage about two-thirds (69%) of total industry assets, according to HFR – up from about 60% in 2009. For firms managing over $1 billion in hedge fund assets, the proportion is 91% (up from 86% in 2009). Previous widely cited pieces of research suggested that hedge fund managers needed at least $300 million in assets to reach profitability. Taken at face value, the research in effect had written off hundreds, if not thousands, of fund managers as loss-making. This segment of the universe includes many firms that have been operating for years. Either we accept the premise that many of them are comfortable making losses year after year, or we assume that those research pieces may have been misleading.

Industry averages, in a sector so diverse, can be imperfect. We know that this often impedes average performance analyses. In terms of break-even analysis, it of course stands to reason that a firm with hundreds of employees, a myriad array of funds and fund structures and institutional clients in numerous jurisdictions would cost more to run than, say, a five-person outfit managing a single fund for a small num-ber of clients (as well as its own money). As far as we were aware, no one had attempted to find the break-even average just for smaller firms. This is why we decided to take it upon ourselves, in partnership with the prime broker GPP, to ask this very question (and related oth-ers). The headline finding of the report we published in July, titled Alive and Kicking, was that the break-even point for firms managing less than $500 million is currently around $86 million in assets. And that was only the average; a significant minority of respondents said they reached profitability when running less than $50 million.

If those figures strike people as surprisingly low, then part of the explanation may depend on a factor that is difficult to quantify in a survey like this. Clearly, some founders will take a pay cut, or draw no salary at all, during the start-up phase. In that respect, hedge fund founders

Put into perspective – September 2017

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are no different to entrepreneurs everywhere, who accept that sacrifices may be necessary, particularly in those all-important first years of operating. Their motivations also may be different if they are primarily managing their own money and that of their friends and families. Easier to quantify is the degree to which smaller firms in recent years have embraced outsourcing in order to keep costs down. This effort undoubtedly has been helped by increased competition among all kinds of service provider businesses today, which has helped to raise standards and reduce fees. Our survey found that legal services, HR and technology are the functions most often obtained from external providers. Also clear from our research was how industry-wide trends such as fee pressures, rising compliance costs and investor demands for ever greater alignment of interests are applicable to smaller firms as well as larger ones. This underlines that while bifurcation has taken place, firms operating in both branches of the industry are experiencing many of the same issues, challenges and opportunities.

FINalternatives

A $13 billion hedge fund is sounding the alarm on one of the biggest trends in investing

A $13 billion hedge fund that flies under the radar is sounding the alarm on one of the biggest investment trends: quants and passive invest-ing. Highfields Capital Management flagged concerns this week about computer-driven trading in its second-quarter letter to investors, a copy of which was reviewed by Business Insider. Boston-based Highfields uses a fundamental value-investing strategy, and though it is one of the biggest hedge funds, it doesn't often get much attention. Quants could worsen the next financial crisis, Jonathon Jacobson, founder of Highfields, wrote in the letter. He highlighted the lead-up to the 1987 financial crisis and partly blamed "portfolio insurance," or "the concept of dynamically hedging an active portfolio with stock index futures." Portfolio insurance, he wrote, contributed "to the complacency as the market ascended to nosebleed territory and most definitely contributed to the downward spiral of that fateful Friday, Monday, and Tuesday in October 1987."

"The strategies employed by many of today's quant and other systematic investors are essentially the same thing," he wrote. "They weight securities or asset classes based upon their "risk" as measured by volatility. Much like portfolio insurance, this strategy gives the purveyor the comfort to take more risk than he or she would otherwise take, and "works" well in benign markets."

Overall, the end could be near for quant strategies, according to Jacobson:

"The bigger point is that the ability for both passive and quant funds to outperform active, fundamentally oriented managers into perpetuity is improbable at best. In regard to the "quants," hundreds of billions of dollars can't exploit the same "inefficiency" for long. My sense is that we are a lot closer to the end than the beginning of these strategies producing excess returns."

Jacobson also touched on the market's historic low volatility, a common theme in hedge fund managers' recent client letters. Jacobson wrote:

"Common sense would suggest markets should be more fragile, not less. Congress is hopelessly gridlocked. The attempt to reform Obamacare failed miserably. It seems more unlikely every day that either major tax reform and/or some sort of economic stimulus package will be enacted, and these are the twin premises that have underpinned the "Trump trade." Central bankers seem deter-mined to end the dual policies of zero interest rates and quantitative easing. And from a geopolitical standpoint, we have a highly inexperienced and impetuous President sitting atop a world that has never seemed more precarious."

He blamed quant funds for the complacency:

"Typically, protracted periods of good market performance are characterized by low volatility and excessive complacency. We can't prove this, but we are convinced that "quant" funds, which have attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in the last few years and a significant portion of which use leverage, and whose models and various strategies are largely based on price action and correla-tions extracted from the reasonably recent past when volatility has been low (largely of their own making), have contributed might-ily to the illusion that market risk is low. As the money continues to flow into these strategies, this dynamic becomes self-fulfilling."

Business Insider

Preqin: Investors in Asia Pacific increase hedge fund allocations

Investors in the Asia-Pacific region have stepped up their allocations to hedge funds, according to research from Preqin, reaching a record $202 billion as of the end of last year. The majority of capital invested in hedge funds by investors based in Asia-Pacific comes from sovereign wealth funds, Preqin's research shows, with some investors making their first forays into the alternative investment segment in 2016. The 12.2% increase over 2015's tally of $180 billion flies in the face of recent allocation trends seen among North American and European inves-tors, which generally saw a greater interest in pulling back their exposures to hedge funds last year than in adding to them.

"The Asia-Pacific hedge fund industry is becoming an increasingly important part of the global landscape," said Amy Bensted, Head of hedge

fund products for Preqin. "Regulatory changes and increasing institutionalization in the region is exposing growing numbers of countries and investor types to opportunities in hedge funds. Although the capital flow is currently driven by sovereign wealth funds, there are signs that the industry's appeal is attracting an increasingly diverse range of investors. In particular, it will be interesting to see if investors in emerging Asian economies will become more involved with the asset class."

FINalternatives

Put into perspective – September 2017

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Trading places: the rise of the DIY hedge fund

Quantitative analysts traditionally trade at a desk in a city's financial district. But a new generation of quants is turning the $300bn indus-try on its head with home-grown algorithms.

Naoki Nagai, a 36-year-old Harvard graduate who grew up in Japan, is a one-man hedge fund. For the past 16 months, he has written hun-dreds of algorithms in much the same manner as quantitative traders in the City of London or Wall Street. But, rather than trade from a Ca-nary Wharf skyscraper or a Manhattan boutique fund, he does so from his home in Honolulu. In August 2006, Nagai left his job as a manage-ment consultant in Tokyo to establish a translation company, which over the next few years began to thrive. The success of his organization, and the fact it wasn't dependent on location, gave Nagai the opportunity to reconsider his lifestyle. He chose to move from Japan to Hawaii. With its appealing climate and laid-back lifestyle, Honolulu seemed a great place to raise a family. Nagai and his wife arrived in the US in Jan-uary 2014.

The Japanese trader was used to being itinerant: he had grown up in a Tokyo suburb, but studied for a Baccalaureate at an international school in South Wales before reading applied mathematics at Harvard. After college, he was recruited by McKinsey as an analyst in its Tokyo office. He spent his days researching companies that operated in the complex world of semiconductors. "I wanted to be an entrepreneur," Nagai says, "and management consultancy seemed the best way to learn how to do that."

After a couple of years as a consultant, Nagai set up the translation agency, met his wife and settled down. Throughout his life he had coded as a hobby, so when he learned about a growing class of US hedge funds that traded using proprietary algorithms, he became interested. The algorithmic approach made sense to someone who saw the world in terms of data and how it might be parsed. These hedge funds were staffed by highly paid quantitative analysts, or quants, who used math and statistics to model complex financial instruments - by leveraging the most up-to-date, detailed research and trading platforms. They also operated in a marketplace worth trillions of dollars. Nagai realized that to trade in this way, he'd have to build a tool with the same professional-grade qualities that Wall Street quantitative hedge funds such as Renaissance Technologies, PDT Partners Fund and DE Shaw used. It seemed a complex undertaking with a questionable chance of success.

Towards the end of 2014, Nagai encountered Quantopian, a Boston-based company that enables so-called retail traders - private individuals rather than institutions - to build, test and submit trading algorithms of their own invention. To submit an algorithm, it was necessary to un-derstand the common programming language Python. Nagai set about learning and, within a month, had submitted his first algorithm. Since then, he has submitted around a dozen, coming second in the Quantopian Open on one occasion with an algorithm that had a healthy 16.87 per cent annual return. Although he doesn't think it will happen soon, Nagai's long-term aim is to be able to live well on the profits. He's con-fident that his continuing study of the strategies pursued by the experts will pay dividends. "If you can study it, you can apply it," he explains.

Wired

The incredible shrinking hedge fund alpha is associated with defining betas

AMPHI Research and Trading

Hedge funds begin to venture beyond costly Mayfair enclave

Hedge funds have become as synonymous with Mayfair as bespoke tailoring and luxury shopping in recent decades. But times are changing. Some of the biggest names in the industry are leaving the confines of the narrow grid of streets sandwiched between Oxford and Regent Streets, Piccadilly and Hyde Park, put off by sky-high rents and searching for larger office space as the industry matures. With returns dwin-dling at some hedge funds, and investors pushing back over fee structures, firms are also under pressure to cut costs elsewhere. Lavishly ostentatious offices that made sense in the boomtime are no longer a priority.

It once made sense for hedge funds to be based in Mayfair and St James's. Their investor base was initially high-net worth individuals, many of whom lived in the area and would meet in one of the Michelin-starred restaurants. But the money flowing into hedge funds has become more institutional, with pension funds, endowments, fund of funds and sovereign wealth funds dominating the investor list.

The Financial Times

Put into perspective – September 2017

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What robot invasion?

The Wall Street Journal

A leg up

The Wall Street Journal

A comparison of US automakers

Visual Capitalist

MARKETS

Put into perspective – September 2017

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Are bubbles becoming more "bubbly"?

BofA Merrill Lynch (via Zero Hedge)

US buybacks are falling by 20% per annum

SG Cross Asset Research (via Zero Hedge)

Rises of a few tenths in the unemployment rate have typically been followed by recessions

BofA Merrill Lynch (via Zero Hedge)

Shrinkflation has hit more than 2,500 products in five years

GoldCore

Put into perspective – September 2017

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Data storage costs over time

Credit Suisse (via WSJ's Daily Shot)

The death of traditional retail

Visual Capitalist

There is still quite a bit of labor slack in the Eurozone

WSJ's Daily Shot

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The financial crisis has created a significant shortfall in the number of small businesses relative to trend

Goldman Sachs (via WSJ's Daily Shot)

Liquidity injection by central banks

The Institute of International Finance (via WSJ's Daily Shot)

In China, some firms ask workers to buy shares in a bid to raise stock price

Around two dozen mainly small listed Chinese companies have taken the unusual step of urging their employees to buy shares in a bid to prop up stock prices and help fend off collateral calls on stock-backed loans. In many cases, workers are stepping up, attracted in part by guarantees that their principal is safe. It's far from clear how these guarantees would work, with employees in some cases being asked to buy shares and hold them for at least 12 months.

Reuters

Public employee pension funding ratio by state

Bloomberg

Put into perspective – September 2017

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Video of the month

Ray Dalio's TED Talk on idea meritocracy

Bridgewater Associates Founder Ray Dalio gave a TED talk on what idea meritocracy looks like at his hedge fund. The talk focuses on how to build a company where the best ideas win. Dalio talks about algorithmic decision making and his history as an investor and how he began to learn from his mistakes. He would write down his lessons and it became a set of principles which eventually were developed into algorithmic decision making. Dalio has also recently published a brand new book, Principles. He notes, "In order to be an effective investor, one has to bet against the consensus and be right." Dalio walks through the biggest mistake he ever made and how it made him ask himself in any fu-ture decisions: "How do I know I'm right?" He gained humility. The Bridgewater founder also takes us inside a meeting at Bridgewater and shows how they collect data on each person's ideas and believability. Dalio says they do this because people naively and arrogantly hold opinions in their mind that are wrong. But if you zoom out and gain perspective, you can see things through everybody's eyes and view things collectively. "Collective decision making is so much better than individual decision making if it's done well. It's been the secret sauce behind our success."

Click to watch

Market Folly

Joke of the month

"Twitter makes you love people you've never met and Facebook makes you hate people you actually know." – Scotty Rosenberg

Cartoon of the month

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Here's why I know Bitcoin and Ethereum are in a bubble, built on top of outright scams

Most people aren't familiar with the cryptocurrency market. They merely see the price of Bitcoins trending higher and say "hey, that's really cool. I should buy some for my clients." Let me explain to you why you're a fucking moron for doing so. The price of Bitcoins and Ethereum are totally dependent upon the ICO market. Oh, you aren't in the least familiar with this wild west "Initial Coin Offering" market? Let me ex-plain. Instead of going through the rigorous process of raising money via traditional means, the IPO or VC market, start-ups and now raising hundreds of millions, maybe billions (hard to say, it's not tracked efficiently) -- by floating their own tokens aka 'currencies' to crypto lovers. Unlike in the VC world or IPO, the buyers of the tokens do not possess voting rights or even own a piece of the company -- just the essence of the company.

Sometimes the tokens could be used to purchase whatever that company sells. If it was iBankCoin, you could take the Flycoins to buy Exodus subscriptions or After Hours with the Trading Addict. You could then trade those tokens to people who wanted the service, or on an ex-change, where people bid up the price, with reckless abandon, to valuations that make the dot com bubble look conservative. There are companies backed by NOTHING worth hundreds of millions. When I say 'NOTHING', please do not misconstrue that with your typical start-up trying to build a business. No, these NOTHING companies are literally jokes, without business models. They are just shitposting and raising money for the fun of it.

Dogecoin, a currency backed by likeness of Shiba Inu dog, an internet meme (nothing more) -- valued at $194 million. How prolific is this ICO market? A company named Tezos just raised over $200 million in a record offering. Doing a cursory google search will reveal that the ICO market is much bigger than is being reported. Companies are raising money in Bitcoins and Ethereum, which is the reason why those two currencies, especially the latter, are so strong. Each offering provides fresh demand for them. It is, without question, the biggest bubble since the housing collapse of 2008. Presently, there are over 800 currencies valued at over $82 billion. Here we have a company that issued a to-ken called "Useless Ethereum token" valued at $42,000 -- down from a high of $75k. Or, how about this one -- FUCK Token -- valued at more than $1.1 million, down from $2.3m. What does Fuck Token do? Let's have a gander at its 'Fucking Whitepaper.'

In short, when you buy Bitcoin or Ethereum, you are buying into a digital currency that is predicated upon an ICO market that is totally unreg-ulated, backed by only the white papers they publish, 'peer reviewed' on Github and Reddit -- beset upon by countless hucksters and future American Greed stars whose only interest is to get rich off the hype.

iBankCoin

Study: 1 in 2 American adults already in facial recognition network

Half of all American adults are already in some sort of facial recognition network accessible to law enforcement, according to a comprehen-sive new study. Conducted over a year and relying in part on Freedom of Information and public record requests to 106 law enforcement agencies, the study, conducted by Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, found American police use of facial recognition tech-nology is a scattered, hodgepodge network of laws and regulations.

Vocativ

THINK TANK

Put into perspective – September 2017

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The richest people in human history

Visual Capitalist

US immigrants are seen more as a strength than a burden to the country

Pew Research Center

Put into perspective – September 2017

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The alarming militarization of American police

Stock Board Asset

From 2005 to 2016 levels, CO2 emissions have decreased almost 30%

Goldman Sachs (via WSJ's Daily Shot)

US-led forces appear to be using white phosphorus in populated areas in Iraq and Syria

The US-led coalition in Iraq and Syria appears to have used white phosphorus-loaded munitions on at least two occasions in densely popu-lated areas of Mosul and in the Islamic State's de facto capital of Raqqa, according to videos posted online and human rights groups.

The often-controversial munitions are common in western militaries and are used primarily to create smoke screens, though they can also be dropped as an incendiary weapon. When a white phosphorus shell explodes, the chemical inside reacts with the air, creating a thick white cloud. When it comes in contact with flesh, it can maim and kill by burning to the bone.

While international humanitarian law stipulates that civilians must be protected from all military operations, it also says that countries must take even more care when using white phosphorus. Additionally, because of the weapon's ability to cause grievous and inhumane injuries, rights groups caution against using white phosphorus to kill enemy troops if other weapons are available.

The Washington Post

Put into perspective – September 2017

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The lost Goldman Sachs 1985 fixed income recruiting video

Click to watch

eFinancialCareers

Some really stupid things uttered by some really smart people

History is littered with very smart people saying very stupid things. Here are some examples of quotes that their authors would like to take back:

• Irving Fisher (economics professor at Yale University in 1929): " Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."

• Albert Einstein: "There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will."

• The president of Michigan Savings Bank urging Henry Ford not to invest in The Ford Motor Company: "The horse is here to stay but the automobile is a novelty, a fad."

• Ken Olsen (president of Digital Equipment and MIT graduate): "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."

• Tom Watson, IBM chairman (1943): "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

• Bill Gates (2004): "Two years from now spam will be solved."

• You Tube Founder Steve Chen: "(I am worried that) there's just not that many videos people want to watch."

• Robert Metcalfe (inventor of ethernet): "I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically col-lapse."

• Darryl F. Zanuck (founder of 20th Century Fox studio): "People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."

• Clifford Stoll (astronomer and author of Silicon Snake Oil (1995): "Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon use books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure!"

• And another head scratcher From Bill Gates: "No one will need more than 637KB of memory for a personal computer. 640KB ought to be enough for anybody."

• Linus Torvalds (founder of Linux): "Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect."

• Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO (2007): "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."

• Steve Jobs (2008) in discussing Amazon Kindle: "The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read any more."

• New York Times (1936): "A rocket will never be able to leave the earth's atmosphere."

• Henry Morton, president of Stevens Institute of Technology on Thomas Edison's light bulb (1880): "Everyone acquainted with the sub-ject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure."

• Variety passing judgment on rock 'n roll (1955): " It will be gone by June."

• Book publishing executive writing to J.K. Rowling (1996): " Children just aren't interested in witches and wizards anymore."

• Astronomer Simon Newcomb (1888): "We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy."

• Newsweek predicting where popular holidays will be in the late 1960s: "And for the tourist that really wants to get away from it all, safaris in Vietnam."

• Senator James Inhofe (R-Ok) in 2004: "God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we human beings would be able to change what HE is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."

RealClearMarkets

TIME OUT

Put into perspective – September 2017

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What do you do with half a million rigged VWs?

Volkswagen bought back hundreds of thousands of emissions-cheating cars. Now it has to figure out what to do with them all.

Bloomberg

Some things change, but some things stay the same

You Had One Job

Burglar fail

Banned In Hollywood

Sperm counts of Western men halved in 38 years

According to new research, there has been an alarming decrease in the average sperm count of western men over the last few decades. From 1973 to 2011, the researchers observed a 59 percent fall, from 337.5 million to 137.5 million. Commenting on the decline, lead author of the study Hagai Levine said "the results are quite shocking...this is a classic under the radar huge public health problem that is really ne-glected". Going further, he warned that "eventually we may have a problem and with reproduction in general. It may be the extinction of the human species." Such fertility research has in the past been criticized for not taking into account the potentially biased sampling methods of earlier studies, citing also the variable of changing laboratory methods. The researchers in this case though, say that such issues have been taken into account - only considering samples where the same count method was used, were of an acceptable size and did not include men known to have fertility problems.

Statista

Population density in China, East vs West

Maps On The Web

Put into perspective – September 2017

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The world's most crowded cities

World Economic Forum

Average daily TV viewing minutes have been declining

Goldman Sachs (via WSJ's Daily Shot)

The share of Americans who reported moving in the past year is at its lowest level since World War II

The Wall Street Journal

Burglary and homicide trends in North America and Europe

Goldman Sachs (via WSJ's Daily Shot)

Put into perspective – September 2017

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Bruno J. Schneller is the CIO of Skën-derbeg Alternative Investments AG. Prior to establishing the company, Bruno worked at investment bou-tique and fund of hedge funds pio-neer BrunnerInvest AG.

Prior to BrunnerInvest AG, Bruno worked at AXA Private Equity in 2007 and at Zurich-based hedge fund Naissance Capital Ltd. in 2006.

Bruno holds a M.A. from University of St Gallen (HSG) and earned the CAIA designation in 2012. Further-more, he is a CFA Level II candidate.

Miranda Ademaj is the CEO and Chairwoman of Skënderbeg Al-ternative Investments AG.

Prior to establishing the com-pany, Miranda worked at Brun-nerInvest AG and Sallfort Privat-bank AG. Before that, she worked at Credit Suisse for sev-eral years.

Miranda is a CAIA candidate (Chartered Alternative Invest-ment Analyst) and member of the global association "100 Women in Finance".

Bruno J. Schneller, CAIA Miranda Ademaj

LinkedIn profile LinkedIn profile

About us

Skënderbeg Alternative Investments AG, investment adviser of the Skënderbeg Fund, began operations in December 2013 and is based in Zurich. The company consists of a team of specialists and has long-standing and financial crisis proven experience in the hedge fund sector. The team has an excellent network with direct and personal access to the top talents in the industry.

The multiple award-winning, UCITS-compliant Skënderbeg Fund* specializes in long/short equity strategies and offers investors access to exceptional hedge fund investments on a global scale. The fund of hedge funds was launched in February 2014 with a concentrated portfolio of 10-15 small to mid-sized managers who are typically overlooked by larger shops.

For more information on Skënderbeg Alternative Investments AG, please visit www.skenderbeg.ch.

*The Skënderbeg Fund is domiciled in Liechtenstein and not registered for public distribution outside its legal domicile.

Contact us

Skënderbeg Alternative Investments AG Seestrasse 17 8702 Zollikon Switzerland info@skenderbeg.ch T: +41 43 535 77 52

Put into perspective – September 2017

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Participation in such activity is grounds for immediate termination of all subscriptions of registered subscribers deemed to be involved at Skënderbeg Alternative Investments AG's sole discretion, may violate the copyright laws, and may subject the violator to legal prosecution. Skënderbeg Alternative Investments AG reserves the right to monitor the use of this publication without disclosure by any electronic means it deems necessary and may change those means without notice at any time. If you have received this publication and are not the intended subscriber, please contact info@skenderbeg.ch.

Disclaimers

Put in perspective is published by Skënderbeg Alternative Investments AG. Information contained in this publication is obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. The information contained in this publication is not intended to constitute individual investment advice and is not designed to meet your personal financial situation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the publisher and are subject to change without notice. The information in this publication may become outdated and there is no obligation to update any such information.

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