U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Marshall Glickman is a careful investor who says he works too hard to take chances with his nest egg.
Back in 2016, his research identified the Infinity Q mutual fund as a holding that could do well even if the stock market didn't. He slowly built up his stake in the fund, watching its performance, and felt comfortable enough to place 30 percent of his substantial savings into the fund.
"I spoke to management multiple times, including people at the fund who told me they had all their net worth in it," Glickman said. "These guys had an incredible pedigree. This looked like a total A-team."
Now, Glickman's investment in the fund is frozen amid questions about how its manager valued a large swath of its assets. Facing a substantial loss, Glickman, owner of an online bookseller in Vermont, is experiencing that bull market rarity — a mutual fund collapse.
Marshall Glickman, an investor who lost money in the failure of the Infinity Q Diversified Alpha Fund.
The fall of the almost $2 billion Infinity Q Diversified Alpha Fund is a reminder to investors about the risks that can lurk in their holdings and the heavy costs and frustrations that liquidating funds bring. Glickman, for one, is especially upset that the fund's trustees have set aside $750 million of investors' money to cover potential costs associated with lawsuits against the fund and its officials.
At least one expert said he is not surprised that the Infinity Q flop involved a portfolio loaded with exotic and hard-to-value investments. In recent years, some mutual funds have increased their stakes in such instruments, posing significant risks to investors. Infinity Q's holdings included complex bets on interest rates, commodities, currencies and corporate defaults.
"There are few things as important to investors as knowing the value of what they own, and the [Securities and Exchange Commission] has rules designed to ensure that funds accurately reflect the real values of their financial instruments," said Tyler Gellasch, executive director of Healthy Markets, a nonprofit organization that promotes best practices in capital markets. "Unfortunately, less than a year ago, the SEC fundamentally weakened those rules."
The rules were changed in the waning weeks of the Trump administration. One let fund managers increase their exposure to the riskier investments favored by Infinity Q, and the other allowed for relaxed oversight of mutual fund boards when valuing those arcane investments.
There is no evidence that the rule changes triggered Infinity Q's valuation issues.
The Infinity Q mutual fund began operations in 2014, aiming to generate returns that did not move in tandem with the overall stock and bond markets. It had A-list connections: A major investor in the fund's manager was the family of David Bonderman, the billionaire co-founder of TPG Capital, a mammoth private-equity firm that may soon sell shares to the public for the first time.
The Bonderman ties were a selling point for Infinity Q; a presentation from last September boasted that its investors would gain access to the same "alternative investment strategies originally created" for the prosperous family.
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