CBS – A truly amazing phenomenon is the continued popularity of hedge funds, especially among high net worth investors. Despite the historical evidence on their lousy performance (as presented in my book “The Quest for Alpha”), hedge funds continue to attract great attention.
Instead of hype and hope, by contrast, we continue to provide you with something more reliable to evaluate how these funds have fared — evidence. The table below presents the returns of the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index and compares it to the performance of various stock and bond indexes, both for the period 2003-2011 and for the first quarter of 2012. We’ll do another review after each quarter.