My earliest experience with alternatives was as a rookie analyst in 1979. Among other things, I was covering small oil wildcatters who funded themselves by promoting oil and gas limited partnerships sold through retail brokers. The 1/2″-thick prospectuses laid out terms that were so unfavorable to limited partners that at first I couldn’t understand why anyone would buy them. So I asked the VP Finance of one of my coverage companies. He laughed, and said the offerings were not for people who wanted to make money. They were for people who wanted to tell others at a party that they were wealthy enough to have an income tax problem.
I remember a China-oriented private equity fund whose prospectus touted the promoters’ prowess through their extraordinary history of high returns. The returns were high–but, after fees, they matched almost exactly those of the Hang Seng index. Again, lots of sizzle but…
As part of the financial reform after the financial crisis, and because of widespread improprieties in the alternatives industry–like misstatement of returns, or professional credentials, or size of assets under management …or other stuff I’d call flat-out fraud–many alternatives providers were required to begin filing reports with the SEC, which has since prosecuted a number of high-profile cases of abuse.
Trump is now taking two actions in support of alternatives, both of which seem to me only to be pluses for dubious alternatives promoters. He’s proposing that ordinary investors be allowed to buy alternatives in 401k accounts (they’ve been barred as too opaque and risky). He’s also “solving” the issue of fraudulent reporting by ending the mandate that smaller alternatives firms to file their results with the SEC (removing the threat of Federal prosecution for, say, falsifying returns).
Neither makes any sense to me. Why do this? Maybe the same reason Trump has made no effort to keep his promise to eliminate the carried interest ploy private equity managers use to avoid income tax.