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By Beverly Chandler, Opalesque London:

March was a month of extraordinary index movement for Australian hedge fund managers, reports Australian Fund Monitors. While year on year figures for the country’s alternative managers show that equity based funds are 9.07% up, the March monthly returns show less exciting performance.

The local index was badly hit by the Japanese dramas. The report says: "The ASX200 fell around 7% at one point on the back of the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster, only to recover all of that to end the month broadly square. That created some special challenges for equity based managers, as volatility spiked sharply only to fall back again as stock prices did the opposite and the market recovered.

Some of the more risk averse managers fell only marginally following the Japanese earthquake, but having taken risk off the table and bought protection, didn't fully participate in the rebound although still managing to end the month with a positive result. Equity based Managers such as Herschel, Optimal and AR Capital did well to finish with positive returns of up to 1%."

However funds such as Evergreen, up 1.01% for March, went into the month with more risk on the table and higher exposure to uranium and resources which hit them as initially performance fell initially before recovering as they aggressively bought stocks oversold in the panic. The report notes that Mathews Capital's Velocity and Searchlight funds for instance......................

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