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Hedge Fund Winners and Losers

The NYPost is looking at the winners and losers in the NY area hedge fund community:

Note that Jake at EconompicData does a much better job:

Source:
NO FUN(D) FOR HEDGES
NY TRADERS TAKE HUGE HITS IN DOWN MARKET
TERI BUHL
4:07 amAugust 3, 2008   
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08032008/business/no_fun_d__for_hedges_122824.htm

Monday, August 04, 2008 | 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)
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Comments

Barry,

Last year I posted that during 25-year periods(approximately a generation),
there seems to be a financial accident.

Right on the money, in 2007 we had the Mortgage Debacle.

1) Two things worry me: Our society permeated with debt.

2) The preponderant reliability on the Service Sector.

It seem to me that wee need a few more months of suffering.

I have posted about this on my site.
See
http://wrahal.blogspot.com/2008/08/twenty-five-year-cycle.html

Posted by: Will Rahal | Aug 4, 2008 5:26:53 PM

I will agree with the NY Post article that these fund managers have a lot of work to do in order to get their funds back to black before bonus time. However, with the S&P 500 down 12.65% YTD through July and the average Hedge Fund listed by the NY Post down -2.78%, I'd say they "haven't done horribly".

Looking at cumulative returns (click Jake if interested in the chart) since the beginning of 2007, the "haven't done horribly" becomes "have done quite well".

The problem is many of these funds sold their returns as absolute return alpha strategies and as many are figuring out, it was likely beta the whole time.

Posted by: Jake | Aug 4, 2008 5:44:19 PM

Does this include July performance which was a disaster for many funds?

Posted by: Xman | Aug 4, 2008 6:06:37 PM

I see the July 17th comment but that seems a bit odd. Also since the July bottom we have had financials rally and energy/commodities melt. Bet performance is much worse now.

Posted by: Xman | Aug 4, 2008 6:09:22 PM

For those of you that believe that the WORST NYC hedge fund was only down 18% I have a nearby bridge to sell you.

Posted by: Norman | Aug 4, 2008 7:10:13 PM

It looked like someone left skid marks in the tape today... any meat to the rumors of who it was? Commodities were slaughtered today...

~Stupid Equity Guy

Posted by: ~SEG | Aug 4, 2008 7:50:04 PM

Like the financial analysts who "outed" the closet indexers and got the noise about indexing "out there," it's just a matter of time before investors begin to realize that hedge fund returns can be replicated with a few factors... what would be cool would be an ETF that held those factors AND got the carried interest tax break.

Posted by: VennData | Aug 4, 2008 8:58:35 PM