Hedge Fund Rebalancing Could Be Reducing Selling Pressure On The Markets

Even though on average hedge funds had a down year last year, they still outperformed the broader market and many other asset classes. As a result of this out-performance, the money allocated to hedge funds had become one of the larger positions within many investment portfolios, causing portfolio managers with defined asset weighting to reduced exposure to their hedge fund investments in order to get portfolio allocations back in-line. Now, as a result of broader market and other asset classes rallying over the last few months, the allocation to hedge funds is smaller than required, reducing redemption requests which began increasing last fall (see the NY Times article). With fewer redemption requests, hedge funds can quit hording cash (in anticipation of new withdraws), and instead start putting capital to work in the market. As mentioned by the authors of the NY Times article, given their high fees, new regulations, and negative press, it may take some time before new money makes it way into hedge funds at the same pace managers saw just a few years ago. Nonetheless, the reduced selling alone could be enough to start increasing returns and attracting new interest among investors. This alone could be good for all investors, regardless of their individual exposure to hedge funds and other alternative investments.