Following seasonal outflows in December and January, hedge fund assets grew by 2% in February, bringing the sector's total assets under management to $3.1 trillion, according to eVestment.
Investors allocated some $13 billion of new capital to the industry in February, and performance gains added $48 billion more.
A pattern of year-end redemption pressures followed by inflows in February, now in its fourth consecutive year, shows how institutional investors are influencing the timing of hedge fund flows, eVestment said.
Managed futures, which returned to favor with investors in the second half of 2014, took in $3.6 billion in new assets in February for a year-to-date total of $6.3 billion. This is the strategy's first positive year of aggregate flows since 2011, eVestment reported.
Managed futures recorded returns of 6.6% last year, well ahead of other hedge fund strategies.
In January and February, investors allocated nearly 12 times more assets to larger managed futures funds with upward of $1 billion under management than to smaller ones, eVestment said.
As well, larger managed futures funds with good performance have enjoyed 14 times more new asset flows in 2015 than their well-performing smaller peers.
