Quote from zdreg:
your figures prove nothing of the sort. there is the remainder bias. hedge funds that are in heaven or purgatory are not included. it doesn't include fees and taxes.
Well, that is by no means different from S&P or any other index - companies that have been dropped from the index or defaulted would not contribute after that point. However, from the investor perspective, if you are investing into the broad index via a fund of funds or some other allocation service, the index is a good enough benchmark.
To address the survivorship bias, you can look at any NAV index, e.g. Dow Jones Credit Suisse Hedge Fund Index which includes pretty much every 10m+ fund in the TASS database. Just to clarify, "years" column is years back (e.g. 2 means total return over the last 2 years):
years HFNAV SPTR
1 0.5% 7.8%
2 9.3% 18.5%
3 28.5% 48.6%
4 4.5% -8.0%
5 19.2% -0.9%
6 35.5% 13.2%
7 45.7% 22.8%
8 60.4% 38.6%
9 83.5% 59.5%
10 89.3% 33.2%
11 100.5% 16.9%
12 122.3% 11.9%
13 160.5% 35.3%
14 160.0% 67.4%
15 218.2% 115.1%
While there where numerious years where SPTR outperformed the HF index, the long-term returns are superior. They are even better if you look at them in some risk-adjusted mode. NAV calculation actually includes the AUM fees, but probably excludes the performance fee.
Quote from zdreg:
the argument that taxes are different for each participant is a cop-out.
Taxes are different for each participant and it's worth remembering that majority of HNWI do not live in the US. As well as that majority of hedge funds are not domiciled in the US either. So I don't think bringing taxes into the picture is right at all.
In any case, I don't understand what the whole fuss is all about. Are there funds that produce better risk-adjusted returns then S&P 500? Certainly, plenty of them. Are there funds that produce returns that are decorrelated from the market? Yes, a fair number. Should someone with a few bucks to spare allocate some capital to these strategies? Probably. Should they put all of their capital there? Certainly not.