The hedge fund industry gave up a bit of ground in February, falling back -1.00% for the month, according to the Barclay Hedge Fund Index compiled by BarclayHedge, a division of Backstop Solutions.
Hedge funds significantly outperform broad markets through a bad start to 2022 hedgeweek.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hedgeweek.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Opalesque Industry Update - Hedge funds started 2021 on a positive note returning 0.98% in January, according to the Barclay Hedge Fund Index compiled by BarclayHedge, a division of Backstop Solutions. By comparison, the S&P 500 Total Return Index was down 1.01% in January.
Gainers outnumbered losers in January among the sectors tracked in the Barclay Hedge Fund Indices, despite challenging news on both the economic and the COVID-19 pandemic fronts during the month. Most hedge funds sectors performed solidly during a complicated month, said Sol Waksman, president of BarclayHedge. Equity markets reached record highs before tailing off late in the month with the S&P 500 experiencing its worst week since October. Meanwhile, COVID cases surged once again, leading to a U.K. lockdown and a downturn in U.S. employment. Despite the negatives, the hedge fund industry managed to produce a positive month in January.
When Salem Abraham would show up at his grandfather’s 10,000-acre ranch in Canadian, Texas, it was often bad news for the Hereford bulls: dehorning, branding, castration.
These days, he has an equally uncomfortable message for the tassel-loafered endowment managers at Harvard, Princeton, and MIT: “Hope is a bad strategy.”
It’s a warning Abraham hedge fund manager, commodities trader, and Texas rancher has been delivering for years to investors who figure they will be lucky enough to dodge the next stock-market calamity.
Endowments, foundations, and their ilk today are wildly over-reliant on the stock market, Abraham says. Their managers are ignorant that bonds and other key asset classes are increasingly correlated to equities. And they naively believe that the pricey hedge funds they shovel their money into will provide safe haven in a selloff.