I found these charts of the Barclays hedge fonds indices
http://www.barclayhedge.com/cgi-bin/barclay_stats/plotgraph.cgi?prog_id=22
amazing ! How long will it continue …
These hedgefonds must be doing something similar as C2.
They are doing it in the UK because of legal problems in USA ?
I don’t understand this.
Hedge funds were rising a lot until 2008 but stagnate since then
http://www.hennesseegroup.com/information/info/Hedge%20Fund%20Assets%20vs.%20Number%20of%20Hedge%20Funds%20graph.pdf
http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2010/12/28/saupload_fund_growth.jpg
(did they contribute to the 2008-crisis ?)
The charts aren’t labelled or explained properly so it’s difficult to tell exactly what they are saying. My reading is:
1) The first chart shows that systematic traders (What funds were included? Is it before or after charges? How was the study conducted?) as a group averaged a relatively steady 9.5% per year return over the long term regardless of market conditions. The return is nothing to write home about but the consistency makes it very good.
2) The second chart simply shows that the number of hedge funds and investors therein was increasing until 2007.
3) The third is completely unlabelled but I suspect it just shows amount of money under management rather than returns. In that case it is no surprise that there is a drop after 2007 as people were getting out either in panic or out of necessity to cover liabilities elsewhere.
And no, I don’t think hedge funds contributed to the crisis any more than the banks, politicians or the rest of us.
