Let's first take a look at hedge funds.
Hedge fund managers are less restricted than traditional investment managers and thus may have the flexibility to invest anywhere. They see opportunity.
Most hedge funds do have a broadly stated strategy but are allowed some deviation from that strategy. It is an aggressively managed portfolio of Investments across asset classes and regions that is leveraged takes long and short positions and or uses derivatives.
It has a goal of generating High returns either in an absolute sense or a specified Market Benchmark and it has few if any investment restrictions return enhancing strategies include using leverage short positions and derivatives hedge funds usually have a shorter time Horizon than private Equity or Venture Capital as we will see momentarily.
Hedge funds are typically classified by strategy. Although categorizations may vary many classifying organizations focus on the most common strategies, but others have classification systems based on different criteria such as the underlying Assets in which the funds are invested classifying hedge funds is important. So that investors can review aggregate performance data. So let's strategies to build the portfolio funds and select or construct appropriate performance benchmarks event driven strategies seek to profit from short term events typically involving potential changes in corporate structures such as an acquisition or restructuring that are expected to affect individual companies relative value funds seek to profit from pricing discrepancy and unusual short-term relationship between related Securities Equity head strategies can be thought of as the original hedge fund category. They are focused on public Equity markets and take long and short positions in equity in equity deriv.
Securities some hedge funds called Equity only funds invest exclusively in common Equity Securities and lastly macro hedge funds emphasize a top-down approach to identify economic Trends evolving across the World trades are made based on expected movements and economic variables. Generally These funds trade opportunistically in the fixed income Equity currency and commodity markets macrohedge funds use long and/or short positions to potentially profit from A View on overall Market direction as influenced by Major economic Trends and or events historically dominated by Equity hedge and macro. There is a much more even distribution today.
Here's a glimpse of some of the largest hedge funds according to assets under management.
As well as by strategy.
and lastly by country
