Setting standards

Following the growth of the hedge fund market over the past decade, several index providers have responded by introducing products designed to measure and analyse this market. The role and effectiveness of these indices are hotly debated throughout the industry. In particular, whether hedge fund indices can be used as performance benchmarks, when hedge funds generally aim for absolute rather than relative returns? And can hedge fund indices provide useful information on the marketplace, when the characteristics of individual funds are often specific to a particular manager? While thes...