Hedge Fund Winners at Eurekahedge 2019
Around June 12, 2019 Eurekahedge announced awards presented to 45 hedge funds. You can download the summary of award recipients for free in exchange for your email.
Eurekahedge displays candidate nominee proxy index files, not the actual data of the winning funds. The data in the PDF have three different date ranges.
Performance by Date Range
Date Range 1: December 2017 - March 2019
The graph shows the returns for the proxy nominee indexes (the winners exceeded these returns). Some of these proxy indexes exhibit low volatility, shown on these pages in the PDF file: 16, 18, 20, 21, 23, 26, 27, 33, 36, 38, 39, 42, 46, 56, 60, 64, and 76.
Date Range 2: March 2014 - December 2018
Date Range 3: March 2014 - March 2019
Finally, another date range begins from March 2014 and ends March 2019, for 5 of the winners.
Most of these 5 year proxy nominee indexes exhibit low volatility, shown on these pages in the PDF file: 29, 30, 32, 50, 51, 52, and 80.
Comments About Hedge Funds
The figure above shows visual proof that it is possible for some managed funds to have no losses during some short time period. For this particular case, the gains range from 7 percent to 35 percent. Historically, consistency from year to year is very unusual.
Hedge funds employ various strategies to optimize return or to minimize risk, known as hedging. They might short-sell, trade derivatives, futures, options, or other instruments. Hedge funds typically seek returns at some defined target level, regardless of what the market might be doing.
A quick approximate comparison: a mutual fund will tend to look like the market averages, and a hedge fund will tend to look different from the market averages (if their strategy is going well). For example, when the market indexes decline, the mutual funds usually decline. Special funds, such as AIEQ, might decline a little, or might decline up to the same percentage as the indexes. Hedge funds might rise (if their strategy is going well).
Investopedia discusses hedge funds (with a slightly negative emphasis). The left sidebar has a variety of useful hedge fund topics, such as these three categories:
- Hedge Funds vs. Private Equity Funds
- Hedge Funds vs. Mutual Funds
- Hedge Funds Performance in the Market
Hedge fund performance in the market is a tricky subject. A large percentage of privately managed funds do not publicly report their true earnings. For example, all the indexes representing the Eurekahedge fund winners are proxy indexes, composed of other “similar” sources. For example, Forbes lists 20 highest earning hedge funds and their 2017 earnings. The data shown in the Forbes table are not sufficient to make a direct comparison, in percent, for the funds in the list, in the manner shown in the graph for the Eurekahedge Nominee Indexes.
Some funds might issue phrases like “Excellent Risk-Adjusted Returns” or “Uncorrelated With the S&P 500.” These phrases are not meaningful unless one can also see the objectives and philosophy of the fund managers, plus actual returns data, plus the effects of the fees.
Performance information for hedge funds can be found by starting with Google, using the phrase “performance data for hedge funds.” Some information is free. Some organizations essentially rent their database of information, like a subscription. It is helpful to see returns data over a period of years, such as 5 years, 10 years, etc., because the returns are usually different from year to year.
Hedge funds typically have high minimum balances. Most hedge fund investors are high net worth individuals or investment companies or businesses.