No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller by Harry Markopolos (rainbow fish read aloud .txt) 📗

More important, perhaps, most of those who are aware of Madoff’s status in the hedge fund world are baffled by the way the firm has obtained such consistent, nonvolatile returns month after month and year after year.

Madoff has reported positive returns for the last 11-plus years in assets managed on behalf of the feeder fund known as Fairfield Sentry, which in providing capital for the program since 1989 has been doing it longer than any of the other feeder funds. Those other funds have demonstrated equally positive track records using the same strategy for much of that period.

Lack of Volatility

Those who question the consistency of the returns, though not necessarily the ability to generate the gross and net returns reported, include current and former traders, other money managers, consultants, quantitative analysts and fund-of-funds executives, many of whom are familiar with the so-called split-strike conversion strategy used to manage the assets.

These individuals, more than a dozen in all, offered their views, speculation and opinions on the condition that they wouldn’t be identified. They noted that others who use or have used the strategy—described as buying a basket of stocks closely correlated to an index, while concurrently selling out-of-the-money call options on the index and buying out-of-the-money put options on the index—are known to have had nowhere near the same degree of success.

The strategy is generally described as putting on a “collar” in an attempt to limit gains compared to the benchmark index in an up market and, likewise, limit losses to something less than the benchmark in a down market, essentially creating a floor and a ceiling.

Madoff’s strategy is designed around multiple stock baskets made up of 30—35 stocks, most correlated to the S&P 100 index. In marketing material issued by Fairfield Sentry, the sale of the calls is described as increasing “the standstill rate of return, while allowing upward movement of the stock portfolio to the strike price of the calls.” The puts, according to the same material, are “funded in large part by the sale of the calls, [and] limit the portfolio’s downside.

“A bullish or bearish bias can be achieved by adjusting the strike prices of the options, overweighting the puts, or underweighting the calls. However, the underlying value of the S&P 100 puts is always approximately equal to that of the portfolio of stocks,” the marketing document concludes.

Throughout the entire period Madoff has managed the assets, the strategy, which claims to use OTC options almost entirely, has appeared to work with remarkable results.

Again, take the Fairfield Sentry fund as the example. It has reported losses of no more than 55 basis points in just four of the past 139 consecutive months, while generating highly consistent gross returns of slightly more than 1.5 percent a month and net annual returns roughly in the range of 15.0 percent.

Among all the funds on the database in that same period, the Madoff/ Fairfield Sentry fund would place at number 16 if ranked by its absolute cumulative returns.

Among 423 funds reporting returns over the last five years, most with less money and shorter track records, Fairfield Sentry would be ranked at 240 on an absolute return basis and come in number 10 if measured by risk-adjusted return as defined by its Sharpe ratio.

What is striking to most observers is not so much the annual returns—which, though considered somewhat high for the strategy, could be attributed to the firm’s market making and trade execution capabilities—but the ability to provide such smooth returns with so little volatility.

The best known entity using a similar strategy, a publicly traded mutual fund dating from 1978 called Gateway, has experienced far greater volatility and lower returns during the same period.

The capital overseen by Madoff through Fairfield Sentry has a cumulative compound net return of 397.5 percent. Compared with the 41 funds in the Zurich database that reported for the same historical period, from July 1989 to February 2001, it would rank as the best performing fund for the period on a risk-adjusted basis, with a Sharpe ratio of 3.4 and a standard deviation of 3.0 percent. (Ranked strictly by standard deviation, the Fairfield Sentry funds would come in at number three, behind two other market neutral funds.)

Questions Abound

Bernard Madoff, the principal and founder of the firm, who is widely known as Bernie, is quick to note that one reason so few might recognize Madoff Securities as a hedge fund manager is because the firm makes no claim to being one.

The acknowledged Madoff feeder funds—New York-based Fairfield Sentry and Tremont Advisors’ Broad Market; Kingate, operated by FIM of London; and Swiss-based Thema—derive all the incentive fees generated by the program’s returns (there are no management fees), provide all the administration and marketing for them, raise the capital and deal with investors, says Madoff.

Madoff Securities’ role, he says, is to provide the investment strategy and execute the trades, for which it generates commission revenue.

[Madoff Securities also manages money in the program allocated by an unknown number of endowments, wealthy individuals and family offices. While Bernie Madoff refuses to reveal total assets under management, he does not dispute that the figure is in the range of $6 billion to $7 billion.]

Madoff compares the firm’s role to a private managed account at a broker-dealer, with the broker-dealer providing investment ideas or strategies and executing the trades and making money off the account by charging commission on each trade.

Skeptics who express a mixture of amazement, fascination and curiosity about the program wonder, first, about the relatively complete lack of volatility in the reported monthly returns.

But among other things, they also marvel at the seemingly astonishing ability to time the market and move to cash in the underlying securities before market conditions turn negative; and the related ability to buy and sell the underlying stocks without noticeably affecting the market.

In addition, experts ask why no one has been able to duplicate similar returns using the strategy and why other firms on Wall Street haven’t become aware of the fund and its strategy