The two characteristics of any dumb money is:
#1) They try to beat the market
#2) They take on huge directional risk while trying to doing so.
The pros couldn't care less about beating the market. If I'm worth $2 Billion, the last thing I care about is whether or not I make $500 million $100 million off the markets. My number one priority is instead, how to preserve my wealth by not losing any of it!
Let's apply this concept to hedge funds. Q1 return +5.49%, QQQ returned +17.5%.
Dumb money comes out: "wow underperform, so bad, I can do better!"
But these numbers are meaningless without analyzing the risks involved, what if the +5.49% return came at a -0.5% drawdown? what if the +5.49% return came at just being 10% exposure to stocks? These results would hands down beat the QQQ on a risk adjusted basis.
Returns presented without risk are meaningless. There are "traders" on wallstreetbets who made +21,076% on buying OTM options which turned into a home run, then lost -100% on buying the same OTM options over and over again cause apparently they thought they were the greatest trader in the world. Start with a $50K account, turn it into millions, then turn it into zero. Genius right? LOL