Research

Diversification is a central principle of hedge fund portfolio construction – but no single lens tells the whole story. This primer explores how assessing portfolio risk from different perspectives can help an investor build a more resilient portfolio.

With AI dominating both public and private equity markets, it can seem like there is only one way to invest. But private equity works best where it can invest behind durable demand, recurring spend, and multiple avenues for value creation. Download the one-pager to read more.

Once overlooked by global hedge fund investors, Korea is now offering a growing set of opportunities driven by reform, rising market participation and expanding manager interest.

Loss frequency and loss ratio are important credit metrics, but they are backward-looking. Private credit loss metrics are also cyclical and do change as credit conditions evolve. Drawing on Aksia’s private credit database of unrealized deals, this article examines more recent credit conditions through other performance statistics, including interest coverage ratio. Download the paper to read more.

A look at the role of global macro strategies within HEDGX and how they may help improve portfolio outcomes across different market environments.

Each year, Aksia’s Operational Due Diligence team aggregates information on terms, fees, and expenses from fund reviews conducted by their staff during the year. These reviews leverage Aksia’s position in the private markets ecosystem, providing a valuable perspective on market trends and practices across private equity, private credit, real assets, and hedge funds. Download the report to read a summary of their observations.

Private credit risk is often discussed in terms of default rates, but realized principal loss offers a more relevant view. Drawing on Aksia’s private credit database of realized deals from 2013–2025, this piece examines loss frequency, recovery rates, and loss ratios across sectors and industries to show how cumulative impairments have behaved in practice. Read the paper to see how these findings translate into forward-looking loss scenarios for private credit portfolios.

Hedge funds encompass a broad set of disparate strategies with often very different approaches and underlying risk drivers. While the standard method of grouping them by sector does provide some consistency, it can mask wide discrepancies in risk and return profiles within these sectors. Aksia’s portfolio utility framework is a qualitative grouping methodology for hedge funds based on their intended role in a portfolio. Read more to learn how it works.

Media headlines over the last few weeks have heavily covered the software SaaSpocalypse and BDC redemptions. As with any big story, there are nuances to consider which the headlines often miss. In this case, it is the sequencing of events that is important to understand. Read More.

Private equity has a reputation for complexity and opacity and of returns driven largely from financial engineering and leverage. However, we show that factors such as growth and valuations are important drivers of private equity returns, not unlike public equities. And like public equities, outcomes have tended to be stronger in segments of the market where those characteristics are relatively more abundant. Read the research report to learn more.

Given their heterogeneous nature, hedge funds can serve different roles in different portfolios. However, one of the main benefits of hedge funds is their ability to diversify equity risk. This has become increasingly valuable in recent years because traditional sources of diversification haven’t worked as well as they used to. Download our recent report to learn more about how to use hedge funds in portfolios.

To begin 2026, there has been renewed interest in hedge funds from allocators, with investors showing an increased appreciation for the recent strong performance and attractive diversification characteristics of institutional-quality portfolios. Long/short equity managers were able to capture a heavy dose of beta, couple with elevated alpha on both the long and short sides. Emerging market-focused managers did particularly well. Read the 2025 Hedge Fund Recap to find out more.

Despite some of the negative headlines, overall performance remained strong in private credit, supported by wide spreads and elevated base rates. There is still a yield premium in direct lending versus broadly syndicated loans (BSLs), but spreads have tightened, particularly in the upper middle market. Key themes for 2026 include a focus on attractive areas of direct lending, such as European and core/lower middle market borrowers, as well as select segments within asset-backed lending (ABL) like NAV loans and transitional real estate lending. Read the 2026 Private Credit Strategy Outlook to learn more.

Private equity performance remained modest in 2025, although signs of both returns and improving exit dynamics are beginning to emerge. Although low compared to historical levels, distribution yields hit a four-year high on the year. Importantly, distributions have outpaced contributions over the last 18 months. Areas that investors should consider focusing on are the lower middle market and European opportunities within buyout, and smaller, specialized transactions in the secondaries market. Read the 2026 Private Equity Strategy Outlook to learn more.

Aksia concludes that withdrawing the 2013 bank leveraged lending guidelines will enable banks to originate higher leverage loans more aggressively to large and upper-middle-market corporate borrowers. This increased competition may pressure loan spreads downward for upper-middle-market sponsor-backed borrowers, while other private credit segments remain unaffected.

One of the main benefits of hedge funds is their ability to diversify equity risk. Historically, bonds have been the go-to defensive allocation in balanced portfolios, but their relationship with equities has changed. By contrast, institutional hedge funds have maintained a steadier diversification profile, if anything it has somewhat improved lately. Replacing half of a traditional bond allocation with institutional hedge funds yields compelling benefits, especially with an uncertain outlook for stock-bond correlations going forward. Read the paper to find out more.

The Hedge Fund industry represents a large percentage of total assets within alternative investments, and institutional investors still maintain substantial allocations to hedge funds. However, the way institutions use hedge funds has shifted. Today, those hedge funds favored by institutional investors have roughly half the beta to public equities as the rest of the industry. As an allocation within the diversifying bucket of portfolios, these low-beta, risk-mitigating hedge funds have been quietly performing well. Download the paper to learn more.