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Alternative Market Briefing

Other voices: The 10 main signs of evolution in the hedge fund industry today

Thursday, February 12, 2009

This article was authored by Clayton Heijman, managing director of Darwin Platform, Netherlands, to coincide with today’s Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday anniversary.

The past year has been a real eye opener for hedge fund managers and their investors. Most theories and models needed revision, following unexpected and unthinkable market shocks. With most funds now having published their full year results there can be only one objective:

Restoring investor’s confidence that hedge funds can produce exceptional returns.

We are now one month into this New Year and the first few weeks have showed us that the hedge fund industry is dramatically adapting to a new investment world. In this short paper we would like to review the 10 main signs of evolution in the hedge fund industry today.

1- A lot of hedge funds have stopped their activities

Over the past recent months the demise of poor performing funds has been well publicised by the average newspapers. Underlying these events however, is a shakeout of the strategies that no longer have a place. Highly leveraged strategies, emerging market focus and sub-optimal managers fall off the radar screen. In normal circumstances these funds would dwindle on for a number of years but last year has been a cold shower for sub-optimal business models.

2- Deleveraging across the financial sector has left scars

The deleveraging in the entire financial sector has also affected hedge fund strategies. The highly leve......................

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