(Fortune) — Are investors mad at the SEC – or are hedge funds mad at the SEC?
That’s the question raised by several readers about the SEC’s proposal to increase the amount of money you need to have to invest in a hedge fund to $2.5 million. It appears that the little guy is outraged.
But in sharply worded e-mails to me – why, oh why, can’t some of you be civil? – people said that actually, the outrage has been generated by hedge funds. (While large hedge funds don’t care about the proposed rule, small ones do, because it will make it harder for them to scrounge up the capital from family and friends that they need to get started.)
Readers say that some funds were even sending out form letters to encourage would-be investors to criticize the SEC’s plan. “I recently received an e-mail from a small hedge-fund company with an attached Word document with ‘exactly’ the same comments in your article asking me to write to the SEC to complain about the requirements,” says one reader.
