Equity Management #12 : Enhanced Active Equity Strategies 130-30 Portfolio.

If you can imagine a long-short market neutral portfolio, it would be quite easy to imagine a 130-30 portfolio.

The first step is to find some sort of a prime broker.

[ Some helpful folks pointed me to foreign brokers Ameritrade to see if it is possible to construct such portfolios which facilitate the shorting of stocks. Based on I have been told,  prime brokerage services are not available to local retail investors but coming with something similar might be possible with some leverage and using CFDs. ]

1. The first step is to put in say $100 with the prime broker.
2. You then sell $30 of stocks short, creating $30 from the proceeds of the short sale.
3. You can then buy $130 of stocks.

You have net exposure to the market and will tend to do well when the market does well but some extra earnings can come from selecting the right stocks to buy and sell.

This form of enhanced active equity strategies relies heavily on the ability to pick stocks and value can come from ignoring, underweighting or even shorting stocks which are expected to do badly over the medium term.

Prime brokers generally do not provide stock lending services for free, but in the US, there are tax and regulatory  advantage to this arrangement.

Personally, I think it would be nice if Singapore can find ways to facilitate such trades in the local stock markets. Professional investors should have the ability to find new sources of outperformance given that we retail investors are really leveraging on what we read of the blogosphere to make our own investment decisions. It's also a great way for the better retail investors to start pushing their portfolio management to new levels.

Over the next decade or so, I'm not even sure if fund managers would have a place in the investment ecosystem once robo-advisors start to be adopted by a new generation of investors.

First investment knowledge has become de-professionalised of late.Second, retail investors might soon be armed with pseudo-Bloomberg like capabilities to build up their wealth their own way.

If you are an investment expert who found a way to establish a 130-30, do share your wisdom here. I am thinking of ways to up my game as well.