If You're Such a Great Investor, Where's Your Alpha?

Is alpha, the Wall Street term for market-beating returns, sustainable? Or is it a unique, statistical outlier, indistinguishable from random chance?

I have been thinking about this a lot, lately. The relentless drumbeat of negativity about hedge funds, of which I am admittedly a contributor, is the underlying motivation for this line of thought. It has sent me on a hunt for those managers who consistently create alpha.