This is the second post on what I would call investment strategy documents for my idea of a fund. It outlines the business case for what I am thinking of doing. Back when I started in finance in 2000, asset management was a backwater. The area that everyone wanted to be in was investment banking and trading. Hedge funds existed, and had prospered to a degree during the Asian financial crisis, but had gotten severely burnt in the defence of the Hong Kong peg in 1998, and the continuing bull market in US stocks. LTCM was also a major setback for the hedge fund industry. Relatively high interest rates made hedge funds a very niche area of the market. If you were bearish, why not just stick in cash which was yielding 6% in 2000.
Of course as the Fed cut rates after the dot com bust, cash became very unattractive. The hedge fund industry really grew from a (then) misplaced fear of long dated bonds.
