AlphaClone 2016 Year End Letter

The past year has been one of the most difficult investing environments for high active share strategies since the financial crisis.  In a nutshell, cheap money and accommodative central bank policy around the globe has artificially inflated both correlations and valuations in equity markets.  The result is a dissipation in the relative valuation of bad companies compared to good companies, giving stock pickers a very hard time.  For a more in depth look at the factors that have negatively impacted skilled managers’ abilities, please read the research note we published a few weeks ago – “Is Alpha Dead?”

The result is that active funds continue to lag the overall market.  As the table below summarizes, over the past decade, active...