Vishaal B. Bhuyan - The Esoteric Investor: Alternative Investments for Global Macro Investors

Alternative Investments for Global Macro Investors

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2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.

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Printed in the United States of America

First Printing June 2011

ISBN-10: 0-13-248507-9

ISBN-13: 978-0-13-248507-4

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The esoteric investor : alternative investments for global macro investors / Vishaal B. Bhuyan.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-248507-4 (hardback : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-13-248507-9
1. Life insurance. 2. Viatical settlements. 3. Longevity. 4. FisheriesFinance. 5. Water
supplyFinance. 6. Portfolio management. I. Title.
HG8771.B46 2011
332.63dc22
2011013399

This book is dedicated to all my cousins, especially Shivam Shah.

I would like to acknowledge Joseph L. Shaefer, Richard Ellis, and Frank X. Diebold for their assistance in putting together this book.

Vishaal B. Bhuyan is Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Nariman Point, LLC, a New York-based investment management firm focusing on demographic-driven instruments, with expertise in insurance and longevity/mortality instruments. Prior to launching Nariman Point in early 2011, Bhuyan was an independent consultant providing family offices, private equity funds, and hedge funds with market insight and quantitative analysis on the life linked asset class. During that time he published The Wave Report, a monthly newsletter to clients providing a firsthand market perspective on the life markets.

Bhuyan is the author and editor of Life Markets: Trading Mortality and Longevity Risk with Life Settlements and Linked Securities and Reverse Mortgages and Linked Securities: The Complete Guide to Risk, Pricing, and Regulation. He has spoken at various hedge fund and insurance conferences in Tokyo, Vienna, New York, Orlando, London, Nice, Monaco, and Hong Kong. His book Life Markets was referenced in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission report on life settlements.

Bhuyan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005 with a degree in History and Sociology of Science, where he was vice president of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.

Richard Ellis is one of Americas leading marine conservationists and is generally recognized as the worlds foremost painter of marine natural-history subjects. His paintings of whales have appeared in Audubon, National Wildlife, Australian Geographic, Encyclopedia Britannica, and numerous other national and international publications. His shark paintings have been featured in S ports Afield , Audubon, Sport Diver, Nautical Quarterly, Readers Digest, and his own Book of Sharks, now in its seventh printing and called the most popular book on sharks ever written. Ellis has been asked to advise on many museum installations. In 1978 he completed a 35-foot-long whale mural for the Denver Museum of Natural History. The Smithsonian Institution selected 106 of his paintings to form a traveling exhibit of the marine mammals of the world. These paintings are now in the permanent collection of Whaleworld, a museum in Albany, Western Australia. In 2005, in conjunction with the publication in Italian of his Encyclopedia of the Sea, Ellis was given a one-man show of his drawings at the Museo del Mare in Genoa. Ellis is a special adviser to the American Cetacean Society, a member of the Explorers Club, and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. From 1980 to 1990, he was a member of the U.S. delegation to the International Whaling Commission.

Joseph L. Shaefer, B Gen, USAF, Ret. , has had a varied and unique career, both military and civilian. He entered active-duty service in Army Psychological Operations in 1970. He served as a Special Forces A-Team XO and CO from 1971 to 1976, first with the 5th, and then with the 20th (NG) Special Forces.

He joined the USAFR as an intelligence analyst and command briefer, and later he served as a HUMINT (human intelligence) officer, an interrogator and strategic debriefer, and an interrogation and debriefing instructor. Later assignments included the NATO, South America, and Southeast Asia country desks; commander of the Mobile Interrogation Teams in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm; air attach to Rangoon, Burma; commander of the language detachment at the Presidio of Monterey; and senior political/military affairs officer, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Washington, D.C.

Positions as a general officer include service as the reserve chief for the A2 and the acting A2 during Operation Allied Force (Kosovo) at Air Combat Command; a member of the AF Intelligence Crisis Action Team after 9/11; reserve chief for the J2, U.S. Strategic Command; and reserve chief for the Director, Defense Intelligence Agency.

In his civilian career, Shaefer entered the securities industry in 1972 and later founded his own brokerage, which was subsequently bought by Charles Schwab & Co. He was a regional and senior VP at Schwab until he retired to found Stanford Wealth Management, an SEC-registered investment firm. He was one of the charter members of the CIAs Project Prophesy regarding the use of market intelligence (MARKINT) to discern possible terrorist activities, and he contributed to a number of research papers as author or editor.

Shaefer currently is professor of global and security studies (counterterrorism, the intelligence community, illicit finance) at American Military University/American Public University. After being awarded his undergraduate degree in international relations at UCLA, he earned a masters in military studies with honors in unconventional warfare from AMU/APU.