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November was dominated by the theme of a US rate hike later in the year, along with the ECB's dovish stance regarding further easing in the Eurozone. The latter has been to some extent realised earlier during this month when the ECB decided to cut deposit rates even further, adding to their menu an ever expansive array of negative yielding bonds on offer from countries otherwise plagued with anaemic growth. It would be interesting to see how this easy credit and the simultaneous calls for reforms aka austerity will lead the Eurozone onto firmer grounds. Meanwhile markets struggled with soft PMI data from China which led commodity markets further into the red. Oil prices remained under pressure during the month despite rising inventories, and it is unlikely that OPEC may be reducing production in the near term - especially with Saudi Arabia and Russia/Iran embroiled in a proxy war in Syria where the latter are likely to gain more from any price increase.

Key takeaways for the month of November 2015:

On a year-to-date basis, hedge funds are up 2.58%, which compares with a gain of 4.61% seen over the same period last year. Total AUM in hedge funds has grown by US$100 billion in 2015, with three-quarters of this gain coming from investor flows.

Among developed market mandates, Japanese managers lead with year-to-date gains of 6.36%, followed by European managers up 4.95% while North American managers trail behind with gains of 0.90%. North American managers look on track to post their worst annual return since 2011.

Greater China investing hedge funds posted their third consecutive month of gains and were up 0.85% in November, outperforming the CSI 300 Index by almost 9% on a year-to-date basis.

Distressed debt funds have posted the worst return among all hedge fund strategic mandates on a year-to-date basis, down 3.92% and are on track to post their worst performance since 2008. Relative value volatility funds however, have delivered the best gains of 5.58% in 2015.

Asia ex-Japan mandated hedge funds are up 7.15% at 2015 year-to-date, the biggest gainer among all hedge fund regional investment mandates, outperforming the MSCI AC Asia ex Japan Index by over 14%.

CTA/managed futures strategies posted the best gains among all strategic mandates in November, up 2.53% - their strongest monthly gain since January 2015. The strategy has attracted almost US$30 billion in investor flows the second highest following long/short equity strategies.