Forbes – There’s a public debate raging about the pros and cons of hedge funds—not any individual hedge fund, mind you, but rather hedge funds in general.
There’s been plenty of skeptical talk in my circles. As a whole, the industry has produced very lackluster returns over the past couple of years, with the S&P 500 index clobbering the leading aggregate hedge-fund index. In 2012, the HFN Hedge Fund Aggregate Index was up 6.65 percent while the S&P 500 was up 16 percent. In 2011, the same hedge fund index had a return of -4.5 percent while the S&P 500 was up 2.11 percent.
