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Simon Lack has spent 23 years with JPMorgan before founding SL Advisors, a Registered Investment Advisor. Simon is a trading and hedge fund veteran: he sat on JPMorgan's investment committee allocating over $1 billion to hedge fund managers and founded the JPMorgan Incubator Funds, two private equity vehicles that took economic stakes in emerging hedge fund managers.
In this Opalesque.TV video, Simon talks about how his firm SL Advisors aims to generate income in a world of negative real rates, basically through the following three strategies: Investments in Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs), Deep Value Equity and a Hedged Dividend Capture Strategy.
The Hedge Fund Mirage: Who makes money in hedge funds?
Simon also talks about "The Hedge Fund Mirage", his book that received some controversy stating "if all the money that's ever been invested in hedge funds had been in treasury bills, the results would have been twice as good."
"We were better when we were smaller", says Lack. He agrees that there are "great hedge funds out there", that some of the most talented investors in history run hedge funds, and that plenty of investors are happy with their hedge fund investments.
However, in his analysis, Lack is not looking at individual funds, but at the total dollar amount put into hedge funds by investors. The profitable years of the late 90s involved far fewer investors than today, and after hedge fund assets started to balloon from 2000 onwards, investors would be missing out: Looking at the aggregate investor profits and fees from 1998 to 2011, Lack estimates that 84% of the total went as fees to the hedge fund managers, 14% to fund of funds and just 2% went to investors as investment returns.
The industry association AIMA published a "comprehensive rebuttal", citing "methodological, mathematical and factual errors" (available here: www.aima.org/en/media/press-releases.cfm/id/E33DADD4-C8AB-47A3-BA7C5BF1B032F8F5).
In an article published on SeekingAlpha, author Felix Salmon disagrees with AIMA's paper (seekingalpha.com/article/794231-why-investors-should-avoid-hedge-funds). The controversy remains open.

Simon also talks about:
How ballooning hedge fund assets cause much higher equity market risk
Why and how investors should get out of "distorted" credit markets
How SL Advisors is different from a hedge fundamental
How to invest in hedge funds:
Manager selection beats diversification
Size matters: balloning hedge fund assets lead to increased equity market risk
Look for strategies "off the beaten track"
Much of Simon Lack's career with JPMorgan was spent in North American Fixed Income Derivatives and Forward FX trading, a business he ran successfully through several bank mergers ultimately overseeing 50 professionals and $300 million in annual revenues.

He is a CFA chart-holder and author of The Hedge Fund Mirage: The Illusion of Big Money and Why It's Too Good to Be True. Simon chairs the Investment Committee for Wardlaw-Hartridge School in Edison, NJ, and also chairs the Memorial Endowment Trust Investment Committee of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Westfield, NJ.