By Neil Wilson
All things considered, the first quarter was pretty gruesome for many hedge funds. On average, hedge funds globally dropped more than 1.2% in March, leaving them down an estimated average of 1.66% for the quarter, according to the HedgeFund Intelligence Global Index. But the red ink was a whole lot worse in plenty of areas.
Hedge funds in Asia were particularly hard hit, with the average fund dropping 2.52% in March, to leave the AsiaHedge Composite down an estimated 5.36% for the first quarter. This was still significantly better than the Asia-Pacific equity markets - with the MSCI Pacific Free Net index dropping 9.57% over the same period. But it was obviously not great - even after what was a good year for Asia-Pacific funds in 2007. And some first-quarter returns were particularly weak among single-country funds in India, China and Australia. In all...