Hedge fund industry gets its own blog

The hedge fund industry now has its own blog – hedgefundassembly.blogspot.com – courtesy of Rick Steele, the chief executive of TechInvest.

The hedge fund industry now has its own blog – hedgefundassembly.blogspot.com – courtesy of Rick Steele, the chief executive of TechInvest. The aim of the blog is to “throw light on the Australian hedge fund industry”, Steele says. “I think there is still a shroud of mystery around hedge funds which I’d like to see removed.” Steele is hopeful of getting comment about the site as well as a wide variety of contributions from the industry. “That’s the good thing about blogs. People are able to say what they think about whatever topic,” he says. TechInvest, which was formed in the late 1990s as a specialist funds manager for the technology industry, and launched a listed investment company, has diversified over the past few years with a structured fund and a market-neutral fund. The manager concentrates not only on technology stocks but also health care and telcos. Steele says that the launch this year of Telstra’s blog – ‘Now we are talking’ – showed the growing importance of the medium as a place to share commentary. Telstra has nominated some of its staff as contributors, one of whom does regular caricatures and cartoons, but also encourages comments from customers and shareholders. “It’s a trend that I want to be part of,” Steele says. Earlier this year, Steele created a wiki for the superannuation industry – superwiki.com – which he told the CMSF conference in April that he would donate to the industry if someone found a sponsor. He said at the conference that the funds management industry had not embraced technology for communications as well as it could have.