Hard To Value Assets, Hedge Funds And Investment Fiduciaries

As I have pointed out on multiple occasions, valuation is an integral part of investment risk management for several reasons. First, fees paid to asset managers are frequently linked to performance and performance calculations depend on reported values. If values are artificially inflated, returns are likely to be inflated as well. Second, imprecise values can skew asset allocation decisions, lead to hedges being too big (or too small) and possibly cause an investor to breach trading limits that are part of an Investment Policy Statement. It's no surprise then that valuation process questions about who does what, when and how continue to surface.

According to a May 9 Wall Street Journal article, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") is investigating "the way hedge funds value their thinly traded holdings and how they respond when investors ask for their money back." The SEC has been vocal about its concerns regarding asset valuations for awhile. In December 2012, Bruce Karpati, then Chief of the Asset Management Unit of the SEC Enforcement Division (and now in private industry), talked about a focus "on detecting fraudulent or weak valuation practices - including lax valuation committees and the use of side pockets to conceal losing illiquid positions - and the failure to follow a fund's stated valuation procedures." Click to read "Enforcement Priorities in the Alternative Space." (As an aside, some hedge funds buy and sell actively traded securities for which there is a ready market and full price transparency.)

The U.S. Department of Labor ("DOL") regularly broadcasts its concerns about "hard to value" assets, including financially engineered products that show up in certain defined benefit and defined contribution retirement plans. In September of 2008, I spoke before the ERISA Advisory Council, by invitation, to address valuation issues from the perspective of a trained appraiser and fiduciary best practices expert. Click to read "Testimonial Remarks Presented by Dr. Susan Mangiero." I talked at length about valuation questions to ask of service providers and procedural prudence considerations for institutional investors.

A few weeks ago, senior attorney Fred Reish addressed monitoring and uncertainty in his April 19, 2016 newsletter. He directed readers to Fiduciary Rule preamble text that urges an advisor and his financial institution to install an adequate monitoring process before recommending "investments that possess unusual complexity and risk, and that are likely to require further guidance to protect the investor's interests." Click to read "Interesting Angles on the DOL's Fiduciary Rule #1." It doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that a "complex" and "risky" investment could be hard to value and not particularly liquid. (I have purposely not defined the terms in quotes herein as they are often related to facts and circumstances for a particular investor.)

Expect to read more about this important topic of valuation, especially as applied to those investors in search of higher returns. In a "no free lunch" world, risk and return go hand in hand. It's not necessarily a bad thing to take on greater risk as long as there is an understanding at the outset as to what gives rise to uncertainty and how risks are being mitigated.