Hedge funds posted their fifth consecutive month of gains in July, with the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite index returning 2.42% and the HFRI Fund of Funds Composite index returning 1.45%, according to data from Hedge Fund Research.
Year-to-date July 31, the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite index returned 12.17% and the hedge fund-of-funds index was up 6.74%.
In a news release, HFR researchers noted that based on the seven-month return, “hedge fund performance is on pace for (the industry’s) best year since 2003, when the average fund returned 19.55%” for the calendar year.
The best performing hedge fund strategies in the first seven months this year were the HFRI RV: Fixed Income Convertible Arbitrage index, 38.63%; HFRI EH: Sector-Energy/Basic Materials index, 23.60%; and HFRI RV: Fixed Income-Corporate index, 17.82%.
The worst performing strategy indexes for the seven months of 2009 was the HFRI EH: Short Bias index at -15.2%, followed by the HFRI Macro: Systematic Diversified index, -2.88%.
