The hedge fund industry has started to use promotional films to present themselves to new investors. Surfing imagery and family farms have supplanted long-standing sales points.
The hedge fund industry is witnessing a small revolution on the other side of the Atlantic. In order to attract investors, a small portion of them — but the trend is going viral — have called upon promotional film to glorify their activities and performances.
Two reasons explain this new phenomenon: on the one hand, a recent law which allows the advertising of unlisted funds; on the other, the increasing and imposing presence of videos on the web.
According to CNBC, the Californian fund Topturn Capital is a pioneer in this domain. In this clip, with seductive imagery, its co-creators play on the analogy of surfing, which one of them used to do. “Investing is akin to surfing, one must know to appreciate the momentum to enjoy the wave,” explains a spokesperson. The entire project is shot by the sea with a professional surfer who planes his boards in his atelier. Who said “cliché”?
The next video was made to be considered like a short film, a la Hollywood.
The risk manager of a hedge fund specializing in commodities trading tells us why, despite the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s prediction of an excellent corn crop that entailed a future fall in price, she gambled on a price increase.
This is not a simple question of graphics on a Bloomberg screen. We leave the trading floor and climb aboard a company jet, heading toward the barnyard where she grew up and where, thanks to her dad, who is a farmer and sheriff, she learned the concept of “short” and “long” when they used to fly over the fields of the neighboring state to evaluate crop health!
The fund also possesses an agricultural property where our risk manager could dip her hands in the soil, only to realize that it was dry, which means harvests will not be as plentiful as the authorities announced. Several months later, she sold her positions on corn 2.5 times higher than the buying price.
When will we be presented with a “hedge fund movie” category at the Oscar ceremony?
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