Barron's: A Liquid Alternative Mutual Fund Brain Trust

• The cover story in this weekend's Barron's takes a profile of AQR Capital Management, the largest liquid alternative mutual fund player.
• This distinctive investment manager has strategies for delivering results even in down markets.
• Other featured articles focus on finding rising stars in the art market, as well as on the prospects for a retail giant, three cybersecurity stocks and more.

John Liew, Cliff Asness, David Kabiller and a team of high-powered Ph.D.s have built AQR Capital Management into a $141 billion investment giant that gets impressive results in good markets and bad, says this week's cover story in Barron's. AQR's liquid alternative mutual funds are among the best in the business.

"At AQR, Investment Rigor Spells Success" by Andrew Bary points out that few investments have produced strong returns since last July. Yet the academics at AQR are delivering, as this distinctive investment manager "seeks to translate academic insights about finance and the markets — such as the appeal of value and momentum investing — into winning quantitative strategies for institutional and retail buyers." Nearly all of AQR's liquid-alt mutual funds are in the black since July.

While AQR's approach can be hard to understand, says the article, one key is diversification. According to one of the firm's founders, "This has been one of the periodic reminders of the benefits of diversification. There has been a view since the market bottom in 2009 that all you needed was the S&P 500 index. "

"AQR is the clear leader in delivering alternative strategies to retail investors," said one expert quoted on the article. "It has developed strategies that move to their own beat and fulfill the promise of delivering uncorrelated returns that will diversify a traditional portfolio."

According to another, "AQR has replaced all-star guru managers with a systematic and consistent approach that we can deploy in client accounts with confidence. It's almost an index fund of the alternatives space."

The article includes graphs that show how AQR funds have stacked up against major world indexes and against its largest rivals, and how the firm has grown into the largest liquid alternative mutual fund player. There are also videos in which AQR experts discuss their strategy for beating the markets and how they make money in down markets.

Related Link: Barron's Picks And Pans: Wal-Mart, Medtronic, Palo Alto Networks And More

Other Feature Stories

Check out the latest from Barron's Penta to discover how high-quality, lower-priced art pieces from relatively unknown artists are threatening to eclipse work from tried-and-true names. As rising prices draw attention to quality works by these lesser-known artists, art collectors are in a new frame of mind, according to Barron's.

See what Barron's feels are the prospects for Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. WMT after investments in labor and e-commerce, Medtronic PLC MDT with its stability and steady growth, Astronics Corporation ATRO after a brutal pummeling, as well as three cybersecurity stocks poised for a recovery.