MSCI Hedge Fund Composite Gives Back 1.2% in April

The Composite actually bested the MSCI World Equity Index, which lost 2.05%.  The Composite Index performed much better than the World Sovereign Debt Index, which gave up 4.27% for April.

The highest April return came from the Specialist Credit Index, those funds that seek to lend to credit-sensitive issuers, that reported a 0.49% hike. The Relative Value Index was down slightly with a 0.04% loss.  Relative Value is the index focused on spread relationships between pricing components of financial assets or commodities.

The Multi-Process Group Index, an index containing funds that use strategies in which a single investment process does not account for more than 80% of their risk capital showed a 0.42% April loss.

Markedly lagging the pack was the Security Selection Index, which combines long positions and short sales with the aim of benefiting from their ability in selecting investments while offsetting systematic market risks. Security Selection turned in a 1.14% loss. Finally Directional Trading Index reported a decrease of 4.17%. Directional Trading focuses on strategies based upon speculating on the direction of market prices of currencies, commodities, equities, and bonds in the futures and cash markets.

The MSCI Hedge Fund Indices are composed of more than 190 indices and the MSCI Hedge Fund Indices now includes over 1,700 hedge funds.