Ben Bernanke Capital LLC and his risk-managed S&P 500 continue to crush [4]it (if not so much the Fed's $2.75BN DV01 balance sheet which is nursing over $200 billion in unbooked losses on the surge in rates YTD). This comes at the expense of all those other levered-beta chasers formerly known as hedge funds (whose short-books continue to destroy their performance, and careers, left and right, and which inverse strategy - going long the most shorted names - is the best performing alpha-generating strat [5]in the past year), who as the following summary table summarizing the performance of the most prominent hedge funds are fighting tooth and nail to generate meager mid- to high-single digit returns. And since this relative underperformance in a world in which there is no risk left continues for the fifth year in a row [6], one can't help but wonder: just how viable is the hedge fund model at a time when Ben Bernanke is the taxpayer funded, uber-risk manager for everyone?
And our apologies to Clive Fund, on the wrong end of the table below, which lost money YTD, in 2012 and 2011 again, which moments ago folded. Just one of many more to go.
- CLIVE COMMODITY HEDGE FUND PLANS TO CLOSE, ACCORDING TO LETTER
- CLIVE FUND MANAGED MORE THAN $1 BILLION
Something tells us the woefully named Keynes Leveraged Quantitative Strategies Fund will be next to fold...
[7]
The Years biggest winners and losers:
[8]
Full HSBC hedge fund performance tracker through mid-September: