NEW YORK (HedgeWorld.com)–The MSCI Hedge Fund Index returned a meager 0.1% in July, based on early data from hedge funds reporting to MSCI.
As a result, year-to-date hedge fund returns are starting to look less impressive, after beginning the year with good performance. For the first seven months of 2003, the MSCI Hedge Fund Index is up 8.1%, but had already returned 7.51% by the end of May.
Nevertheless, a hedge fund cornerstone, long/short equity funds, appeared to have another good month, as the MSCI Security Selection Index returned 1.2%, bringing its year-to-date returns through July to 9.5%. In the same period, the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index returned 1.62% and was up 12.56% in the first seven months of the year, respectively.
The Security Selection Index also includes market neutral funds, long-only and short selling equity funds. June's final Security Selection returns came in at 1.3%, following a preliminary report of 1.4%.
MSCI's other four hedge fund groupings didn't do as well in the month. Both the MSCI Specialist Credit Index and the MSCI Multi-Process Group Index returned 0.6% in July. The Specialist Credit Index–which includes distressed funds, private placement funds and long/short credit funds–returned a strong 11.7% in the year-to-date period through July. June's returns were 1.7%.
