Funds are launching larger and growing more quickly – eVestment

eVestment is out with a new report that looks at the age and asset raising of hedge funds for possible correlations. Not surprisingly, the oldest, biggest hedge funds have the most assets. Also not surprisingly, these funds typically have a slightly lower rate of return than their smaller counterparts. One interesting nuance however is that age appears to play a bigger role in performance than asset size in some cases.

Looking at the report data it appears that hedge funds have a lifecycle, and the older they get the slower they get. An index of funds with less than two years of track record (rebalanced annually) outperformed mid-aged (2-5 yrs.) and tenured (over 5 yrs.) funds in each year from 2003 through 2013. The institutionalization of the industry is also driving this as institutions tend to prefer longer track records and slower moving funds...

Funds are launching larger and growing more quickly. The percentage of small, young funds has declined every year since 2004, down from 94% in 2004 to 77% in 2013. In the same time period, the percentage of mid-sized funds under two years old have increased from between 5-6% pre-financial crisis, to nearly 20% in 2013. Some of this is driven by compliance cost overhead, another key driver is the growth of seed deals which were once viewed as a sign of weakness, and are now viewed as a sign of strength. The report categorizes "small funds" as those with around $250m owing to the break-even threshold after expenses...

You can read Bailey McCann's full article here. Mid-sized hedge funds achieve higher returns in 2013 - Preqin

New research from Preqin's Hedge Fund Analyst reveals that mid-sized hedge funds were the best performers in 2013 compared to other fund sizes. Mid-size......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.