Gap between best and worst hedge funds hits decade high

The disparity of returns between hedge funds in September was the highest ever seen by Luke Ellis, head of Man's multi-manager unit and a veteran of the fund of hedge funds business.

He said about one-third of highly regarded managers  either returned more than 5%, or lost more than 5% - "a remarkable dispersion". "Over the last two months there has been a handful of opportunities to make or lose 20%, and in both we saw the range of industry returns go from up 20% to down 20%. "The differences in performance came from managers who hedged things out and then found the market looking for anyone with risk ‘on', and trying to rip the risk out of their hands," Ellis (pictured) said. Analysis from FundWizard of the HedgeFund.net database in September suggests that, m...