Despite some turbulence of late, there's still a lot of money flowing into hedge funds. The battle for alpha is as intense as ever, with more hedge funds heading into emerging markets, even as they push into more esoteric domestic niches such as vineyards and race horse development. One of the hottest new markets is weather. The rise in the number of weather-related derivatives available to trade has attracted funds bent on finding a truly new asset class. As AllAboutAlpha.com notes, some funds have put meteorologists on staff. It makes sense; the need for assets that are uncorrelated to stock is acute. But hold on, as the article notes, recent studies have found that weather--mainly temperature indexes--may, in fact, be correlated. Perhaps the correlation is weak.  

For more:
- here's the article from AllAboutAlpha.com

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