Credit Suisse has released its Annual Global Hedge Fund Investor Survey.
Highlights
1. Responses came from close to 550 institutional investors, representing $1.03 trillion of hedge fund investments.
2. Long/Short Equity was identified as being the most sought after strategy in 2013.
3. Emerging Markets Equity was the second most favoured strategy.
4. Emerging Markets and Asia-Pacific regions remained in the top two regional preferences
5. Managers running between $500M and $2B AUM were in the best position to be considered for future allocations.
6. Crowded trades/herd behaviour, additional regulatory changes and underperformance risk as the three greatest sources of risks facing the hedge fund industry.
7. Sovereign default risk and credit/counterparty risk, which were both in the top three last year, dropped significantly.
8. Risk-adjusted and uncorrelated returns are the primary investment objectives of pension funds who responded in the survey.
9. Pension fund investors regard further hedge fund consolidations/liquidations to be a potentially significant development. They also expect to see additional fee compression.