In a strong month for the global hedge fund industry, emerging markets hedge funds continued to shine the brightest, according to the August 2017 eVestment Hedge Fund Performance Report.

Brazil-focused funds lead the pack in August with +5.34 per cent performance, bringing year-to-date performance to +16.88 per cent. China-focused funds are the top performers so far in 2017, returning +23.02 per cent so far this year, while returning a slightly cooling +2.69 per cent for the month of August.
 
Overall the industry returned +0.74 per cent in August. This brings year-to-date performance to +5.47 per cent. Hidden in that overall year-to-date figure is that 75 per cent of hedge funds have produced positive returns for the year, and the average return from those positively performing products is near +10 per cent.
 
Aggregate returns from activists were just slightly negative at -0.02 per cent in August, the first month since October 2016 when activist returns have been even close to negative territory. The universe is still among the best performing non-EM strategy in 2017 at +6.63.
 
Managed futures’ returns continued to rebound in August at +1.22 per cent, however year-to-date performance is still weak at just +0.76 per cent.
 
India funds, which had seen exceptionally strong results so far this year, saw returns slow to +0.13 per cent in August. However year-to-date returns for India-focused funds is still exceptional at +22.77 per cent.