Hedge funds still have role despite poor '08 - Collins Stewart

Hodgetts, who manages Collins Stewart Absolute Return Plus, says while there were over 450 hedge funds which failed in 2008, many thousand are still functioning properly. The manager believes while there has been a marked improvement in the performance of global equities this year, world equities and world bonds were still in negative territory for 2009 to the end of April, with hedge funds over 1% positive. "In absolute terms, over the past 19 years to April 2009, fund of hedge funds have outperformed equities by 200% and bonds by 95%," Hodgetts says. "Annualised, that's outperforman...