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February 22nd, 2019
Consumers love a new product launch. Just look at the queues outside Apple Stores when a new iPhone comes out, or the enduring popularity of car magazines with their sneak peaks of the latest models.
But launches of investment funds are different. With both of the examples I mentioned — smartphones and cars — you expect the new product to be substantially better than the last one; if it isn't, it's slated in the press.
We already have far too many funds to choose from and, in the vast majority of cases, new funds are no better than what we already have. What they tend to be though is different to all the other funds out there, and it's that which ensures they attract publicity.
Fund management companies thrive on that publicity. They launch new products, in short, not because they will deliver better outcomes for consumers, but because they believe they will sell.
A classic example is a new Aberdeen fund called the ASI HFRI-I Liquid Alternative fund, which will track an index of about 140 Europe-based hedge funds. Effectively it will give investors with at £5 million to invest access to average hedge fund returns.
The fee of 30 basis points, or 0.30%, certainly seems attractive. But why would anyone seriously want to ape typical hedge fund performance?
Hedge funds were all the rage in the 1990s, and some funds performed spectacularly well. Even taking into account the eye-popping fees they paid, some investors prospered. But hedge funds generally fared very badly in the global financial crisis and have failed to regain their golden touch ever since.
As the Bloomberg columnist Nir Kaissar recently explained, instead of trying to make money, hedge funds "pivoted to not losing it".
"The new objective," Kaissar wrote, "was to manage risk by protecting investors during downturns and delivering returns that are uncorrelated with the stock market.
"It's hard to imagine a lower bar, and incredibly, hedge funds failed to clear it… The equity hedge index has posted a negative one-year return 26 times since 2010, based on monthly returns, with an average decline of 4.4%."
There have been several different explanations as to why hedge fund performance has dropped off so badly over the last decade. Perhaps the most plausible one is that there is simply too much money chasing too few opportunities.
You might have thought that, in view of the dismal returns that hedge funds have delivered in recent years, investors would have started to desert them. In fact the opposite has happened. According to Hedge Fund Research, the data group collaborating with Aberdeen on the ASI HFRI-I fund, assets invested in US-based hedge funds reached a record $955 billion in September 2018.
With more money invested in hedge funds than ever before, your chances of beating the market over long periods are very slim.
The irony is that this new Aberdeen fund may well prove very popular. Institutional investors, who traditionally like investing in hedge funds, tend to be very conservative — slow to embrace new ideas and discard old ones. Added to that, there's still a social cachet connected to hedge funds. Also, of course, there are many investors who can't resist a little gamble.
The ASI HFRI-I fund, then, will probably be good for Aberdeen shareholders and, of course, for already very well remunerated hedge fund managers. But will it be good for those who invest in it? Relative to investing in a regular, low-cost, equity index fund, it almost certainly won't.
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• 12 Bounce Slice Transitions
• For Final Cut Pro
• Easy To Edit
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• PDF Help File Included
• Music is not included
• Used free fonts - link for download included in project.
Bounce Slice Transitions is an absolutely new and really clean Final Cut Pro X template pack that contains bounce effects. This pack includes 12 bounce slice transitions and is a cool way to enhance the look and feel of your music videos, commercials, sizzle reels, teasers, and event videos. You can use different in and out animations, combine them together to get the transition you are looking for.

subset: commoncrawl


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Ted, Sylvia
Jason Jackson
I'm at the theatre. He thinks I'm at home, but I'm here, wearing the dress he likes. I texted him an hour ago: break a leg, darling.
There's a hush, and the curtains part. An empty stage, and then there he is: my husband, but he belongs to someone else tonight. Even though I know the lights hide me from him, I shrink into my seat.
And then she comes on stage. White dress, off-the-shoulder. Smaller than I expected. Beautiful.
I came because I had to see. At night, in bed, he recites his lines, and I fall asleep wondering if he does the same when he's in bed with her.
He's told me a little about her, and a little about the play.
"The opening scene shows the first time Ted and Sylvia meet," he said.
"Is it love at first sight?"
"She bites his cheek. Draws blood."
"Shit. Why?"
He sighed. "Haven't you ever felt like that?"
"What? Have I ever wanted to bite someone?"
"Not someone," he said. "Have you ever wanted to bite me?"
And now the theatre is hot. I want to say to the man on my right, "That's my husband."
On the stage, they're both spotlit, moving towards one another, spinning. It's a scene he was unsure of. He thinks it looks stupid. But the director is experimental.
I watch as she spins. Her hair is longer than mine. I imagine myself at home, spinning in front of the mirror, naked, trying to see my own chaos.
He's surprisingly graceful. She's taught him that move dancers do when they twist around, where their head seems a little behind their body, and then it quickens at a point in each turn to catch up with the body's spin.
And now they collide. Their spotlights join in an intense brightness. The director was right: it's incredibly effective.
They don't kiss, but their hands are on each other. An intense embrace, and then she pulls his head down by the hair, drags it to the side.
She bites his cheek.
There's a gasp from the audience, and he pulls back, covering his face. When he takes his hands away there is blood on them, and he rubs them down her dress, over her breasts.
She throws her head back and her laugh breaks the silence.
The spotlight cuts out, and I'm standing, fists clenched.
The man to my right is looking at me. I want to say, "I know how it's done. A blood bag in his hand. She didn't bite him."
I want to say, "He's sleeping with her."
A single spot: Sylvia – her real name is Catherine – alone at a writing desk.
And only now do I see what I can do. I ask the man to my right if I can get past and I walk into the aisle, then straight up to the stage. I put both hands on its lip, take a breath, and then I push myself up.
About the author: Jason Jackson's prize-winning writing has been published extensively online and in print. In 2018 Jason won the Writers Bureau competition, came second (for the second year running) in the Exeter Short Story competition, was runner-up in the Frome Short Story competition and had work shortlisted at the Leicester Writes competition. His work has also appeared this year at New Flash Fiction Review, Craft and Fictive Dream. In 2017 he was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Jason regularly tweets @jj_fiction
If you've enjoyed this story, please let the author know in the comments below.
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Hiccup is now into adulthood, young but now the leader among the Dragon-rescuing Vikings of their island fortress village of Berk. Though the Vikings have lived in Berk for generations, Hiccup soon sees that they've outgrown their small island, especially with the overcrowding of the Dragons there as they rescue more of them, eyeing the mythical sanctuary on the edge of the world to guide these magical beasts. Meanwhile, love may be in the air, with Hiccup perhaps on the verge of marriage with Astrid, though she seems reticent, and Toothless perhaps finding a mate with a female Dragon very much like him, dubbed a "Light Fury" due to its alabaster color, in contrast to Toothless' obsidian appearance. Unfortunately, it's all a trap set by Grimmel, the notorious hunter of Night Fury dragons, who aims to snuff them all out at any cost.


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Encounters was updated to version 1.8.1 with a bug fix. We have fixed the Font Awesome icon bug of the WordPress Premium Theme Encounters.
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