Hedge funds led by women and people of color outperform those run by white men

Hedge funds led by women and people of color outperform those run by white men

January 29, 2020

The business case for diversity is… well, it’s just embarrassing at this point.

According to new analysis from Bloomberg, hedge funds helmed by anybody other than a white man had almost double the returns of their white-led peers. Specifically, out of the 2,935 funds tracked in Bloomberg’s database, 35 were led by a woman or person of color. When compared with 908 funds that would classify as a peer, the “diversity hires” offered a return of about 6.6% over the past three years, compared to about 3.9% for the benchmark.

While there were no fund types where managers from underrepresented groups did not outperform, there were some outliers. Event-driven funds aim to take advantage of temporary stock mispricing that can occur after sudden news or big corporate events like mergers or bankruptcies. If you invested in one of those run by a person who wasn’t a white man, you probably had a great three years. They returned 9.3%, versus 4.2% from their peers.

And for those really keeping score, the funds which identify and invest in broad, global trends, had the biggest performance gap. “Diverse” managers returned 8.5% over three years, as compared to their peer index of 0.2%.

That’s a big gap.

So, while we wait for the follow up pieces explaining the “flaws” in Bloomberg’s straightforward analysis and that it’s totally fine fine fine to leave your money in the care of powerful white men, I’ll leave you with two questions.

One: Who do you think are starting new businesses faster than anyone else in the U.S. and are responsible for employing 9.4 million workers and generating revenue of $1.9 trillion?

And two: Who do I talk to about getting a job as a hedge fund manager? Because I got your trends covered, all day long.

Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com

On Point

Speaking of questions, Fortune has a few for the presidential candidates I’m incredibly proud of my sisters in inclusion at Broadsheet and Most Powerful Women who teamed up with Time’s Up Now to ask the candidates about the issues that matter to working women and working families. These are the questions that are not asked often enough. Thirteen of the remaining candidates—including President Trump— weighed in on paid family leave, sexual harassment, affordable childcare, and offered their intersectional ideas to address the gender pay gap. Bonus, we’ve got some exclusive video interviews, too. No snark from me, just read, watch, and share.
Fortune

Social media is amplifying anti-Chinese racism as coronavirus fears mount “Brace yourselves fellow Asians, the ‘yellow peril’ has officially resurfaced,” begins this important opinion piece by Evelyn Kwong, a digital producer based in Toronto. The harassment and jokes are already starting, and in addition to being painful, they’re dangerous. “We’re often all lumped together, and the idea of 'yellow peril'—a racist stereotype that generalizes Asians as unsanitary, lower-class, and alien is embedded in our nation’s history.” Fear-mongering impacted Asian business districts like Toronto’s three Chinatowns during the SARS outbreak, but current trolls are just getting started. Kwong cited a commenter on a New York Times story about the coronavirus. “I’m trying to keep an open mind like, it’s ok that these cultures like to eat strange things,” it began. "Meanwhile I am thinking... filthy godless people spreading disgusting diseases via their lust for foul foods... No wonder it took them 1,000 years to (almost) join the modern world...”
Toronto Star

A new survey asks: Where is the diversity in publishing? Jason Low of Lee & Low Books, the largest U.S. children’s book publisher focusing on diversity, has posted an excellent analysis of the lack of diversity in book publishing, based on the company’s own Diversity Baseline Survey, first published in 2015. Despite numerous cultural changes since 2015—including #MeToo, the success of films like Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians, books like The Hate U Give, and numerous industry-specific diversity movements, not much has happened. The book publishing industry is currently, 76% white, 74% cis-women, 81% straight, and 89% non-disabled, numbers which have edged down only slightly from 2015. (Publishers Weekly shows similar numbers in their salary survey, but didn’t query about people with disabilities.) “The book industry has the power to shape culture in big and small ways,” Low writes. “The people behind the books serve as gatekeepers… [i]f the people who work in publishing are not a diverse group, how can diverse voices truly be represented in its books?”
The Open Book Blog

On Background

Speaking of presidential candidates, where are they on A.I.? This is an issue of vital importance to the Black, Latinx, and AAPI working class people who are over-represented in jobs that are poised to be “disrupted” by automation, A.I., and robotics. “The community stands to lose close to five million jobs by 2030 due to technological advances,” says Bärí A. Williams, a tech industry legal and operations executive and startup adviser. “[B]lack Americans tend to over-index in occupations that are service oriented—and not just blue-collar jobs. These service-oriented jobs also include marketing professionals, paralegals, retail workers, data entry clerks, and factory workers.” She’s calling for candidates to get real on tech. “[N]ot just regarding regulation but also dealing with the impact of automation on jobs and how to create effective solutions to that crisis.”
Fast Company

The future of aging and tech Monique Woodard is a fascinating figure in the venture and entrepreneurial scene. She is currently investing in early stage startups (like Blavity and Court Buddy ) and excels at thinking global: She originated investments is sub-Saharan Africa in her previous gig as a venture partner at fund and accelerator 500 Startups. Although she doesn’t run a hedge fund (yet) she does have her eye on how older people use technology and how they want to live as they age. “I invested in my first aging company in 2016 and since then, I've seen the market for aging start to mature as more investors become interested in the category,” she tells raceAhead. For her latest report, she surveyed 534 folks ages 55 to 70, then spent a couple of months parsing the data. Here’s one spoiler: Ain’t no Luddites in this cohort.
Gray New World Aging Report

Reminder: “They" is okay, they say at Merriam-Webster The use of “they” as a gender-neutral option in a preferred-pronoun world is problematic for many grammarians for a simple reason: “They” is a plural pronoun. The good folks at Merriam-Webster explains that “they” has been in use as a singular pronoun since the 1300s, but changing societal norms has expanded its acceptable use. Click through for a helpful history of the seach for a nonbinary term, and some encouragement if it all seems a little awkward to your ear. Here’s some progress: In the 17th century, English laws sometimes referred to people who didn’t fit a gender binary as “it,” “which, while dehumanizing, was conceived of as being the most grammatically fit answer to gendered pronouns around then,” they say.
Merriam-Webster

Quote

“Specifically, I’ve been the only person of color in a room full of white, book publishing professionals more times than I’d like to remember. I’ve been the assistant, digging my nails into my palms to keep from speaking out when some art director declares in a meeting that Black girls on book covers don’t sell; I’ve cried in bathroom stalls, tears muffled by my arms, when a white colleague claimed I was just a diversity hire; I’ve smiled instead of screamed when my boss made yet another racist yet 'well-meaning' comment. I’ve also gotten to work with some incredible authors and helped publish books my younger self could only dream existed.”— Patrice Caldwell, founder of People of Color in Publishing

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