Dow Jones hedge fund strategies make gains

By James Langton

www.investmentexecutive.com

Five of the six hedge fund strategies covered by Dow Jones Hedge Fund Indexes posted gains in November, Dow Jones Indexes reported.

Convertible arbitrage was the only strategy benchmark down for the month, posting a loss of 0.83%. It’s also the only strategy that’s down throughout the first 11 months of 2005, dropping 5.66% so far this year.

The best performer in November was the equity long/short (US) strategy, which posted gains of 2.56% for the month. The strategy is now up 1.99% on a year-to-date basis.

The top strategy on a year-to-date basis is distressed securities, which returned 0.53% for the month and is enjoying cumulative gains of 5.50% for the year.

The event driven strategy was up 1.67% in November, raising its year-to-date gains to 5.34%. Equity market neutral strategies gained 0.22% over the month boosting its return to 1.41% for the year with merger arbitrage up 0.61% for the month and 2.16% for the year.

Nevertheless, all of these strategies are being outpaced by a broad market index. On a float-adjusted basis, the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 gained 3.99% for November, increasing the cumulative year-to-date gains of the domestic broad equity markets to 6.23%.

The fixed income asset class, as measured by the Dow Jones Corporate Bond Index, returned 0.66% pushing its year-to-date return of 0.11% into positive territory.

The Dow Jones World Total Market Index rose 3.59% in November, enhancing the cumulative year-to-date gains of the world equity markets to 8.75.

Data for the Dow Jones Hedge Fund Strategy Benchmarks are based on daily estimates net of fees. Final performance figures for November will be available toward the end of December.