Alternative Investments

The Alternative Investments Seminar is designed to give attendees an in-depth knowledge of this fast growing asset class. The marketplace for alternative investment opportunities has grown tremendously in the past decade and this growth has caused a great increase in the complexity of these instruments. This seminar will help the attendee gain a thorough understanding of how these instruments are structured, why they behave the way they do and the accounting and systems concerns which pertain to them.

The Alternative Investments Seminar gives an investment approach for evaluating the opportunities and pitfalls of alternative investments. Alternative investments generally include real estate, hedge funds, venture capital, private equity, commodities, as well as some other specialized areas. While this course covers some of the basics, it revolves around examples and discussions in class in order to enrich the knowledge of this topic. It is expected that students already have familiarity of introductory finance topics. Students are expected to participate in class examples and discussions.

The Alternative Investments Seminar is ideal for anyone who needs to gain a comprehensive knowledge of the many variations of mortgage and asset backed securities available in today's marketplace. Attendees will also build an understanding of the many derivative securities as well as the language associated with them.

• Overview of Alternative Investments
• Traditional investments - types compared to alternative investments
• Manager tricks in enhancing returns and investor traps in evaluating alternative investments will be done in each section
• Mark to market accounting
• Size and growth of industry characteristics of alternative investments
• Alternative investments - types. The most common and comments on more specialized ones
• Alternative investments - role in modern portfolio theory
• Special risk measures beyond first and second movements such as return, standard deviation
• Skewness, kurtosis, correlation, covariance issues
• Performance tricks
• Statistical issues such as VARs and probability modeling as pertinent to alternative investments
• Creating optimal portfolios
• Timing when to do traditional as compared to alternative strategies
• What Commodity Trading Advisors Are
• Hedge Funds
• Definition of a Hedge Fund
• History of the Hedge Fund Industry
• Common Hedge Fund Traits
• How a Hedge Fund Works
• Legal Structures and Documentation
• Hedge Fund Strategies
• Industry Players
• Hedge Fund Styles and Strategies
• Directional vs. Arbitrage Strategies
• Evaluating Hedge Funds
• Statistical Measures of Performance and Risk
• Evaluation of risk/reward results
• Use of Leverage
• Definition of a commodity trading advisor
• Fundamental and technical techniques
• Blending technical analysis uses including fibonacci ratios, patterns, support/resistance tools, sentiment
• Examples
• Contango and backwardation issues
• Tradeoffs on investing in physical commodities, producers or derivatives
• Margin requirements
• Special risks
• Evaluation of risk/reward results
• Private Equity
• Private equity - definition
• Private equity - legal structures
• Investment methods
• Cash flows versus accounting GAAP versus economic accounting
• Traps in cash flows
• IRR issues
• Mileposts versus cash flows
• Exit strategies
• LBO/MBO issues
• Example/cases
• Behavioral issues and herd investing
• Evaluation of risk/reward results
• Private Equity versus Hedge Funds
• Investment approaches similarities and differences
• Hedge fund investments in private equity