At the 2025 Morningstar Investment Conference, Janet Yang Rohr of Morningstar led a sharp discussion on liquid alternatives in the panel "Do Hedge Funds Work Outside of Hedge Funds?" David Ben-Ur, CIO of Absolute Return at Blackstone, Peter Hecht, Managing Director at AQR, and Andrew Beer, Managing Member at DBi, debated how hedge fund strategies can be brought to retail investors. From fund-of-funds and systematic models to low-cost replication, the panel tackled what works, what doesn’t, and how to build real diversification.
Also our coverage of the 2025 Ben Graham Conference, 2025 Global Alts New York and the Best Alternative Investment Fund Conferences for 2025.
2025 Morningstar Investment Conference - David Ben-Ur, Peter Hecht, and Andrew Beer
Janet noted that the movement to bring hedge fund strategies to the masses through liquid alternatives began more than 15 years ago, spurred by the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) around 2008.
Inflows for liquid alternatives showed a huge spike around 2009, 2010, and 2011. The last decade (roughly 2012-2022) was a "barren era" for these liquid alternatives, but demand spiked again in 2023-2024.
The discussion focuses on "truly portfolio diversifiers" – investments that are legitimately different from stock and bond portfolios, explicitly not covering private credit.
David Ben-Ur - Absolute Return Investing
Blackstone is the largest allocator to hedge funds in the industry, having done so for 30 years, with approximately $90 billion in assets.
Historically, their clients have been the largest and most sophisticated institutions globally.
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