Hedge Funds vs. S&P 500: The Truth About Investment Returns 📈💼 (2024)

FAQs

Hedge Funds vs. S&P 500: The Truth About Investment Returns 📈💼? ›

Reality Check: S&P 500 Outperforms Hedge Funds 🚀

The average annual gain for the S&P 500 fund was 8.5%, or about 125% compounded for the decade. That means $1 million invested in the index fund more than doubled to about $2.25 million. For the hedge funds—not so much. The best one averaged 6.5% a year, or about 88% compounded.

All hedge funds tracked by BNP Paribas returned an average of 7.66% in 2023, differing from the survey results released on Feb. 12. In 2022, these hedge funds returned an average of 0.42%, said a BNP spokesperson. However, survey respondents said their hedge fund portfolios returned an average of 1.1% in 2022.

Components of hedge fund cash yields:

As a result, hedge fund strategies can often have high cash balances, which they invest in short-term cash instruments, including money market funds and treasuries. At current interest rates, these strategies are now earning over 5% on their cash, compared to near zero since 2008.

If your market outlook is bullish, you will need a specific reason to expect a hedge fund to beat the index. Conversely, if your outlook is bearish, hedge funds should be an attractive asset class compared to buy-and-hold or long-only mutual funds.

There are over 3,400 hedge funds in the U.S. It's a big business. But almost none of them consistently outperform the broader stock market. Investing in the S&P 500 is the most straightforward path to stock market riches.

With the threat of recession growing, we examined hedge fund performance during recessionary periods over the last three decades, finding that they have demonstrably outperformed when stocks have declined.

Hedge funds are risky in comparison with most mutual funds or exchange-traded funds. They take outsized risks in order to achieve outsized gains. Many use leverage to multiply their potential gains. They also are unconstrained in their investment picks, with the freedom to take big positions in alternative investments.

The 2 and 20 is a hedge fund compensation structure consisting of a management fee and a performance fee. 2% represents a management fee which is applied to the total assets under management. A 20% performance fee is charged on the profits that the hedge fund generates, beyond a specified minimum threshold.

According to research reports from the likes of Cogent and Preqin, the success rate of new hedge funds is estimated to be around 15-20%, which suggests that the majority of new hedge funds do not survive long after their establishment.

What is the failure rate of hedge funds? ›

One of the reasons for the perceived high failure rate of hedge funds is that their attrition rate is known to be high, approximately 9% per annum. The latter rate is generally estimated by counting the number of defunct funds in hedge fund databases.

Citadel, which ranked second in 2023, made $8.1 billion in profits after bringing in a record-breaking $16 billion in 2022. Its $74 billion in gains since inception rank it as the most successful hedge fund in history.

Hedge funds seem to rake in billions of dollars a year for their professional investment acumen and portfolio management across a range of strategies. Hedge funds make money as part of a fee structure paid by fund investors based on assets under management (AUM).

Reality Check: S&P 500 Outperforms Hedge Funds 🚀

Data shows that hedge funds consistently underperformed the S&P 500 every year since 2011. The average annual return for hedge funds was about 4.956%, while the S&P 500 averaged 14.4%.

Their market-neutral, or balanced, approach to investing helps seek out positive returns by investing in varied instruments over long- and short-term periods. This positions hedge funds as nimble investors in the marketplace, able to anticipate – and avoid – undue risk for their investment partners.

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and index funds are similar in many ways but ETFs are considered to be more convenient to enter or exit. They can be traded more easily than index funds and traditional mutual funds, similar to how common stocks are traded on a stock exchange.

In addition to managed futures, some ways to protect against stock market downside are buying the CBOE volatility index or buying put options.

Commonly called the S&P 500, it's one of the most popular benchmarks of the overall U.S. stock market performance. Everybody tries to beat it, but few succeed.

Less than 10% of active large-cap fund managers have outperformed the S&P 500 over the last 15 years. The biggest drag on investment returns is unavoidable, but you can minimize it if you're smart. Here's what to look for when choosing a simple investment that can beat the Wall Street pros.

That makes outperforming the S&P 500 on a consistent basis no small task. The one fund that has beaten the index in nine of the past 10 years is the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEMKT: XLK).