European hedge funds appear to have come through a torrid month in March largely unscathed, although the flat overall index performance masks very broad dispersion in terms of individual fund returns – with many big outliers on both the positive and negative sides.
With numbers for March now in for about 75% of the funds in the EuroHedge database, the EuroHedge Composite index is showing a provisional median return of just -0.05% for March – after a month in which global markets were buffeted by events in Libya and the Arab world, the disasters in Japan and an array of macro-economic concerns.
The worst performing strategy, as expected, was managed futures – where the median is showing a loss of 2% on the month at this point – while the median return for long/short European equity is also down on the month.
Convertible arbitrage, equity market-neutral/quant, credit, currency and emerging market debt...