Hedge funds have taken a lot of heat in recent years regarding their collective shoddy performance which, in the case of the underperformers, didn’t justify their lofty fees. And things didn’t improve much for the industry during this year’s first quarter as investor outflows and asset-based losses put a big hurt on capital levels.
Total global hedge fund capital slumped beneath $3 trillion during the quarter, a level not seen since third-quarter 2016, says hedge fund industry research company HFR Inc.
According to the latest HFR Global Hedge Fund Industry Report, hedge fund capital declined $366 billion to finish the quarter at $2.96 trillion, a nearly 11% drop from the record of $3.32 trillion in the prior quarter.
Investor outflows in the first quarter were an estimated $33 billion, or about 1% of overall industry capital. That was the largest quarterly redemption since $42 billion went out the door in second-quarter 2009, and was the fourth-largest amount in industry history, HFR said. (The three largest redemption periods occurred during the Great Recession.)
But on a percentage basis, last quarter’s 1% redemption rate was much less versus the nearly 9% redemption rate experienced in fourth-quarter 2008.
HFR noted that performance-based asset losses totaled $333 billion in this year’s first quarter. Consequently, the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index sank 9.4%, punctuated by a 7% stumble in March. On a relative basis, the index during the quarter outperformed the losses of 20% on the S&P 500 Index, 23% on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and almost 31% on the Russell 2000 Index.
The worst-performing group comprised event-driven strategies, where falling equity markets and widening deal spreads created a first-quarter loss of 15.3% in the HFRI Event-Driven (Total) Index.
On the other end of the spectrum, the HFRI Macro (Total) Index gained 0.07% in the first quarter. HFR noted that macro strategies were able to defensively preserve capital during the massive volatility spike in March.
That said, macro strategies had the most redemptions at $22 billion.
Hedge funds used to have an almost super-human aura about them. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of HFR data, hedge funds employing various equity strategies beat the total returns on the S&P 500 Index by an annual average of more than five percentage points between 1990 and 2009. Since then, such funds on average have significantly trailed the index annually.
But despite a rocky start to the new decade, the hedge-fund industry sees money-making opportunities in the months ahead.
“While volatility and market dynamics remain fluid through early 2Q, dislocations created by indiscriminate selling from traditional asset management have created significant opportunities for specialized long/short funds, which are likely to benefit both forward-looking funds and institutional investors in coming quarters,” HFR president Kenneth Heinz said in a statement.