All Hedge Fund Strategies In The Dumps In Q1

Date: Thursday, April 3, 2008
Author: FINalternatives

All six hedge fund strategies in the Dow Jones Hedge Fund Indexes posted losses in March 2008, ending the first quarter in negative territory. 

The worst performer for the quarter was equity long-short, which ended the month of March down 1.60%, and the first three months at -6.23%.

The best performer, which still suffered, was merger arbitrage, which was down 92 basis points in March, but ended the quarter with a YTD performance of -0.40%.

Posting a return of -0.06%, equity market neutral was not far behind the leading strategy on a YTD basis with a quarterly return of -0.52%.

Event driven was down 0.47%, bringing its quarterly performance to -1.47%.

Convertible arbitrage declined 4.55% for the month of March, while distressed securities fell 0.63%, bringing each strategy to a first-quarter decline of more than 4%.

On a float-adjusted basis, the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000, the only broad measure of the domestic equity market, returned -0.69% (-0.77% on a full-cap basis) in March, lowering its YTD performance to -9.52% (-9.61% on a full-cap basis).

The fixed income asset class, as measured by the Dow Jones Corporate Bond Index lost 0.67% this month, pulling its cumulative gain down to 0.88% for the year.

Finally, the Dow Jones Wilshire Global Index, the broadest measure of global equity markets, was also down -1.60% for the month increasing its YTD decline to -9.33% for 2008.