Opalesque – The Australian Fund Monitor (AFM) released last week its “March Absolute Return and Hedge Fund Review” report which showed that the strong rebound in equity markets both in Australia and overseas saw equity-based hedge funds managed in the region post not only their best returns this year, but for the past three years.

AFM took the results of all funds – including non-equity strategies such as Global Macro and Commodities, and including funds of funds, and found that all had posted the best result in March since the start of the Global Financial Crisis in 2007.

With the ASX posting an impressive rebound in March of over 7%, which continued in April, equity-based hedge funds (with 85% of funds results reported) returned 3.18%. Over the past 12 months, equity-based hedge funds returned a negative 13.20%, against the ASX 200 which lost 33.11% and the S&P500 which fell 39.68%.

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Tags: 12 months, absolute-return, amp, asx 200, australia, commodities, equity strategies, global financial crisis, global macro, hedge fund, p500, rebound

West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – There were fewer redemptions in February 2009,($11 billion) compared to January,($30 billion), according to preliminary reports from Eurekahedge, pointing towards the easing of redemption pressures for hedge funds in the future.

The Hedge Fund Index was down 0.5% in February suggesting another month of loss mitigation and strong relative outperformance – The S&P500 was down 11%.

Interestingly, Eurekahedge says, fund of funds managers (-0.2%), on average, have now outperformed hedge fund managers for the first two months of 2009 after 12 months of consecutive underperformance for 2008.

Latin American funds were the only ones to finish the month with decent gains (0.7%), as managers in the region were afforded opportunities with the weakening of most regional currencies against the US dollar, among other things during the month.

Alex Akesson

Tags: 12 months, accredited-investors, american funds, amp, eurekahedge, funds-managers, hedge-fund-index, hedge-fund-managers, hedgeco, latin american, loss mitigation, outperformance, p500, palm-beach, redemption, redemptions, regional currencies