Short investing for the long haul

Today's short selling processes may be more refined, but industry best practice is still a way off, says Michael Marburg of Ramsey Asset Management

Many large institutional money managers are faced with a conundrum. They realise we are in an equity bull market with frothy characteristics. At the same time, however, most large portfolios are more correlated to the equity markets than ever before. With bond yields at insufficient levels and virtually every other asset class at (or above) full value, finding truly diversified alpha is increasingly difficult.

Short-biased hedge funds are the only instrument with an absolute negative correlation