MSCI Hedge Composite in the Red for April

With 62% of the funds reporting, the Composite actually bested the MSCI World Equity Index, which lost 2%.  The Composite index performed much better than the World Sovereign Debt Index, which gave up 4.3% for April.

The highest April return came from the Specialist Credit Index, those funds that seek to lend to credit-sensitive issuers, that reported a 1% hike, with 53% of funds reporting. The Relative Value Index was flat with 66% of funds reporting.  Relative Value is the index focused on spread relationships between pricing components of financial assets or commodities.

Leading the remaining three process groups in the minus column was the Multi-Process Group Index, an index containing funds, which uses strategies in which a single investment process does not account for more than 80% of their risk capital. It showed a 0.8% April loss with 62% of funds reporting. Right on its heels was the Relative Value index, which focuses on spread relationships between pricing components of financial assets or commodities. Relative Value reflected a 0.9% April giveback with 58% of funds reporting

Markedly lagging the pack was the Directional Trading Index, which reported a decrease of 4.1%, with 72% of funds reporting.  Directional Trading focuses on strategies based upon speculating on the direction of market prices of currencies, commodities, equities, and bonds in the futures and cash markets.

The MSCI Hedge Fund Indices are composed of more than 190 indices and the MSCI Hedge Fund Indices now includes over 1,700 hedge funds.