According to a number of reports, one of the Cayman Islands’ leading financial products, hedge funds, is not as lucrative as many have supposed, but its popularity remains at an all time high.
Noted for the risky and exotic nature of their investments, hedge funds actually performed worse last year than the much more conservative Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, which tracks the biggest corporations listed on the New York Stock Exchange. David Marchant, the editor of OffshoreAlert, a leading newsletter on the ins and outs of in the world of offshore finance, reported on this statistic.
Hedge funds returned some 13 percent in 2006, compared with the 15.8 percent return of the S&P 500 Index, according to industry tracker Hedge Fund research, Inc., of Chicago.
