West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – There were fewer redemptions in February 2009,($11 billion) compared to January,($30 billion), according to preliminary reports from Eurekahedge, pointing towards the easing of redemption pressures for hedge funds in the future.

The Hedge Fund Index was down 0.5% in February suggesting another month of loss mitigation and strong relative outperformance – The S&P500 was down 11%.

Interestingly, Eurekahedge says, fund of funds managers (-0.2%), on average, have now outperformed hedge fund managers for the first two months of 2009 after 12 months of consecutive underperformance for 2008.

Latin American funds were the only ones to finish the month with decent gains (0.7%), as managers in the region were afforded opportunities with the weakening of most regional currencies against the US dollar, among other things during the month.

Alex Akesson