Two of the three calculated hedge fund strategies covered by Dow Jones Hedge Fund Indexes, event-driven and merger arbitrage, posted positive returns in the first month of 2009, as main
Two of the three calculated hedge fund strategies covered by Dow Jones Hedge Fund Indexes, event-driven and merger arbitrage, posted positive returns in the first month of 2009, as mainstream equity indices continues to lose ground.
Both merger arbitrage and event driven started off the year with net-of-fee gains of 1.62 per cent and 1.23 per cent respectively.
Distressed securities continued to slide, falling -3.66 per cent for the month of January.
The equity long/short and equity market neutral strategies were suspended on 3 November 2008 and the convertible arbitrage strategy was suspended on 2 January 2009. It has not been determined when calculation of these benchmarks will resume.
On a float-adjusted basis the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000, the only broad measure of the domestic equity market, returned -8.17 per cent (-8.14 per cent on a full-cap basis) in January.
The fixed income asset class, as measured by the Dow Jones Corporate Bond Index returned 0.81 per cent this month.
Finally, the Dow Jones Wilshire Global Index, the broadest measure of global equity markets, posted a -8.34 per cent return in the first month of 2009.