There's a story on Bloomberg.com about Ken Griffin, the famous convertible-arb whiz kid, and Citadel/Wellington, the investment company he founded. Regarding Griffin's supposed efforts to scale his recipe across the planet, a man named Tarrant was quoted as saying,QuoteFew hedge funds have been able to capture the founding hedge fund manager's judgment into an institutionalized process.Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the real "problem" the ease of capturing a managers judgment not just into an institutionalized process, but into a popularized process? You could certainly say that of Richard Dennis, whose pupils became more successful using his objective numerical rules, to the point where he couldn't compete. Not even with the edge of his so-called judgment.The only person I can think of whose recipe hasn't been reproduced to irrelevance is George Soros. And that's because he has been too mushy-headed to express his strategy in any scientific way, to the point where not even he can reproduce it exactly. While his strategy nearly always works, he is as likely as not to follow it, or even know what he is doing or why.So I am curious, how has Citadel been doing lately? And is it really a failure of Griffin to scale his strategy to new opportunities, or isn't just a problem of everyone doing the same thing, to where it wouldn't matter if his whole firm got sucked into a hole in the ground and vanished?

>>>The only person I can think of whose recipe hasn't been reproduced to irrelevance is George SorosWarren Buffett.

rumor has it that griffin isn't doing too well (converts in general aren't- goldman just put out a report saying that april was effectivley the worst month ever for convertible hedge funds. march was the second worst month and jan and feb weren't too good either). but apparently, his converts traders left and griffin had to move from his office back to the trading desk to keep things afloat. apparentlly, his returns have been boosted over the past couple of years by getting oversized allocations of new issues and with fewer new issues and poor performance from those that have come to market, things are rough. add in the volatilty mark downs in the valuation off exisitng issues, fears of widening spreads and premium contraction in takeover candidates without takeover protection, i wouldn't want to be ken griffins dog.

think that index is a touch biased - lots of different strategies there plus a little bit of reporting bias i would imagine?

I think the trend to "instutionalized process" when it comes to HFs is not an institutionalization of the investment process, but much more the operative side of the business. Most big HFs now a days have an institutional business, ie they aren't sleeping on friends sofas and trading out of a garage, however the investment process in most cases hasn't been divulged.

Jaxx: i think in nearly every hedge fund index, CB arbs have been pasted this year!

hink that index is a touch biased - lots of different strategies there plus a little bit of reporting bias i would imagine?biased to the upside