SEC has issued a proposal that would allow OE funds/etfs to levy perf-based fees in a fashion akin to how HFs/private funds do it (ie, up to 20% of gains). Currently, funds can only levy perf fees using fulcrum-fee structure. This would liberalize that.

14/ By using capital efficient funds, we can achieve our target traditional asset allocation and free up capital to be invested in either economically diversifying asset classes or uncorrelated strategies. e.g. 66.6% $NTSX + 33.4% $DBMF (managed futures)

Farmland ETF coming This is one of the more interesting non-derivative ETF developments this year: WisdomTree filed an exemptive application with the SEC that will allow it to launch a farmland ETF. Specifically, the application is to allow WisdomTree's ETF Trust and asset manager to invest in a REIT managed by Ceres, a farmland investment company, which will in turn invest in Ceres Farms, which holds the farmland. WisdomTree acquired Ceres last year. Ceres WisdomTree Filing: @WisdomTreeFunds

BIG: Vanguard acquired Altruist, a wealth management platform. Major bc they never do acqusitions, second one ever. Also it means they are now a custodian. Also shows they want to push their advisory reach (they are super cheap relative to norm, 5bps-25bps depending on minimum) albiet vast majority of their clients were existing Vgrd fund investors vs external new. Salim Ramji said advice is a "luxury" and he wants to expand it and make it accessbile to more people.

Peter Hecht – Portable Alpha: Solving the Funding Problem of Alternatives (S7E31) My guest this episode is Peter Hecht, co-head of the North America Portfolio Solutions Group at AQR. Portable alpha is drawing serious attention right now. Long the province of large institutions, it's now being wrapped into mutual funds and ETFs — which means, for the first time, advisors and the individual investors they serve get a seat at the table. So I wanted to sit down with someone who's been thinking about the idea for almost two decades. We start with the basics — what portable alpha actually is, and why Peter insists the core concept is funding, not leverage. From there we work through the real risks, the cautionary tale of 2008, and the design space: how you organize the alpha and the beta, which overlays to choose, and how to combine them without smuggling in hidden tail correlation. Then we turn to what matters most for this new audience — sizing, lifecycle, rebalancing inside a daily-liquid wrapper, and the gap between the line-item experience and the actual portfolio impact. Please enjoy my conversation with Peter Hecht.