{"id":28717,"date":"2012-04-26T10:40:29","date_gmt":"2012-04-26T14:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/?p=28717"},"modified":"2012-04-26T10:58:09","modified_gmt":"2012-04-26T14:58:09","slug":"hedge-fund-performance-for-march-up-0-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/04\/2012\/hedge-fund-performance-for-march-up-0-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Hedge Fund Performance for March Up 0.1%"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>New York (HedgeCo.net) – Morningstar reported preliminary hedge fund performance for March and for the first\u00a0quarter as well as estimated asset flows through February 2012. The Morningstar MSCI Composite Hedge\u00a0Fund Index, an asset-weighted composite of nearly 1,000 hedge funds in the Morningstar Hedge Fund\u00a0database, eked out a 0.1% rise in March, ending the first quarter up 3.3%.<\/p>\n

“After a strong start in the first two months of 2012, hedge funds lost steam in March and presented a\u00a0mixed picture,” said Terry Tian, alternative investments analyst with Morningstar. “While many U.S. equity\u00a0strategies delivered positive returns, emerging markets, managed futures, and currency strategies suffered\u00a0losses.”<\/p>\n

The U.S. stock market continued to rally in March\u2014the S&P 500 Index and the Russell 2000 Index rose\u00a03.3% and 2.6% for the month, respectively, finishing the first quarter up 12.6% and 12.4%, respectively.<\/p>\n

The Morningstar MSCI North America Hedge Fund Index, which includes hedge funds investing primarily in\u00a0U.S. stocks, rose only 0.5% in March and 5.5% for the first quarter. Hedge funds that invested in smallercapitalization stocks, however, outperformed. The Morningstar MSCI Small & Mid Cap Hedge Fund Index\u00a0advanced 1.1% in March, finishing the first quarter up 10.8%.<\/p>\n

Emerging-markets oriented hedge funds struggled in March due to weaker-than-expected economic data\u00a0from China. The MSCI China NR Index dropped 6.9% and the MSCI Emerging Markets NR Index fell 3.3% in\u00a0March. The Morningstar MSCI Emerging Markets Hedge Fund Index declined 0.9% for the month. March proved to be another difficult month for managed futures strategies, as the lack of trends in most\u00a0markets (such as crude oil and soft commodities) and reversals in some others (precious metals and\u00a0currencies, for example) contributed to losses.<\/p>\n

The Morningstar MSCI Systematic Trading Hedge Fund\u00a0Index declined 1.9% in March, ending the first quarter down 0.4%.\u00a0Currency strategies experienced significant losses in March\u2014the Morningstar MSCI Currencies Hedge\u00a0Fund Index plummeted 4.9%, making it the worst-performing Morningstar MSCI Hedge Fund Index for the\u00a0month. Commodity currencies, such as the Australian Dollar, Norwegian Krone, and Canadian Dollar,\u00a0responded to the renewed concerns over China’s growth and fell sharply in March, reversing their upward\u00a0trends since the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n

In February, single-manager hedge funds saw outflows of $708 million, while funds of hedge funds\u00a0gathered $49 million after eight consecutive months of outflows. The U.S. long\/short equity category\u00a0experienced the heaviest redemptions among all single-manager categories, bleeding $1.2 billion. The\u00a0diversified arbitrage and long\/short debt categories received inflows of $482 million and $348 million,\u00a0respectively.<\/p>\n

March returns for the Morningstar MSCI Hedge Fund Indexes and February asset flows are based on funds
\nthat reported as of April 18, 2012. Hedge fund investors, managers, consultants, and advisors can access
\nadditional information through Morningstar Direct\u00a0SM, the company\u2019s global research platform for institutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York (HedgeCo.net) – Morningstar reported preliminary hedge fund performance for March and for the first\u00a0quarter as well as estimated asset flows through February 2012. The Morningstar MSCI Composite Hedge\u00a0Fund Index, an asset-weighted composite of nearly 1,000 hedge funds in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[919,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hedge-fund-research","category-hedgeco-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28717"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28719,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28717\/revisions\/28719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}