Hedge funds lagging

Before they found hedge funds, pension funds and endowments usually held portfolios with sixty p.c in equities and forty p.c in bonds. several would be more contented if that they had stuck with the recent formula.

Hedge funds have trailed each the quality & Poor’s five hundred Index and a Vanguard index fund with identical 60/40 combine over the past 5 years, in line with information compiled by Bloomberg. The balanced fund beat the most Bloomberg hedge-fund index in six of the last seven calendar years, in line with information compiled by Bloomberg.

“People hear regarding the top-performing hedge funds and that they assume those results hold true for the full business,” George Sauter, chief investment officer for Vanguard cluster Inc., said in an exceedingly phonephone interview. “It seems that on average hedge funds are regarding average.”

Hedge funds are lagging behind when amassing a record $2.1 trillion in international assets from investors attracted by the returns of high managers like Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. and Seth Klarman’s Baupost cluster LLC. The industry’s underperformance has contributed to an estimated $4 trillion in unfunded liabilities at U.S. pensions and prompted investors like the California Public Employees’ Retirement System to question whether or not each manager is definitely worth the customary fees of two p.c of assets and twenty p.c of profits.

‘Fewer Opportunities’
While there’s no proof that hedge funds are falling out of favor, their scale is creating it tougher for the hedge- fund business as an entire to provide higher results than different asset categories, said Simon Lack, a former govt at New York- primarily based JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) (JPM) and author of the 2012 book “The Hedge Fund Mirage” (Wiley, 187 pages, $34.95).

“You have more cash chasing fewer opportunities,” Lack said in an exceedingly phonephone interview.

The main Bloomberg hedge fund index, that is weighted by market capitalization and tracks two,697 funds, fell 2.2 p.c a year within the 5 years ended June thirty. The Vanguard Balanced Index Fund (VBINX) (VBINX), that features a 60/40 split of equities and bonds, gained 3.5 p.c annually and also the S&P five00 Index gained zero.2 p.c a year.

The Vanguard fund additionally beat the HFRX international Hedge Fund Index, a live of hedge fund performance with a extended history, per annum since 2003.

“People aren’t watching returns for the past few years and extrapolating,” said Don Steinbrugge, managing partner of Agecroft Partners LLC, a Richmond, Virginia-based firm that advises hedge funds and investors.

Protecting Capital
Investors still expect hedge funds to outperform within the long-term as low bond yields and a slow-growing international economy limit the gains from stocks and bonds, Steinbrugge said in an exceedingly phonephone interview. Hedge funds still build sense for investors as a result of over time they need boosted returns and guarded investors in troublesome markets, he said.

From the top of 2000 through 2002, when the S&P five hundred Index fell seventeen p.c annualized and also the Vanguard Balanced Index Fund lost six.3 percent, hedge funds came back six.7 p.c annually, in line with information from Hedge Fund analysis Inc.

Hedge funds additionally beat the balanced fund in 2008, the second quarter of 2010 and also the third quarter of 2011, periods when stocks tumbled, information compiled by Bloomberg show. Hedge funds lost nineteen p.c in 2008 compared with a decline of thirty seven p.c for the S&P five hundred Index and twenty two p.c for the balanced fund.

‘Really Worked’
“In 2008 hedge funds very worked,” Goran Hagegard, managing director at Greenwich Associates, a monetary consulting firm in Stamford, Connecticut, said in an exceedingly phonephone interview.

An April study commissioned by the industry’s trade cluster found that hedge funds outperformed a mixture of stocks and bonds from 1994 to 2011. The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index came back nine p.c a year over that amount compared with seven.4 p.c a year for the balanced fund.

Hedge funds give investors “with diversification edges even throughout the foremost troublesome macroeconomic environments,” in line with the report, that was done by the Centre for Hedge Fund analysis at Imperial school in London for the choice Investment Management Association, the trade cluster, and KMPG International, an accounting firm.

The study’s results were primarily based on a hedge-fund index that offers equal weight to funds no matter size, as a result of investors allocate cash to funds of various sizes, said Robert Kosowski, one among the study’s authors, in an interview.

Asset-weighted indexes higher replicate the particular returns achieved by investors, Lack and Steinbrugge said. Since 1998, HFR’s asset-weighted index trails the performance of its equal- weighted index by regarding one.6 proportion points a year.