Income Tax Rates

Heres the first thing you should know about hedge funds: They have no clear identity or definition. In the investment world, I run a hedge fund has the same meaning as Im a consultant in the rest of the business world. The speaker may be managing money and making millions, or she may want a socially acceptable reason for not having a real job. The person who really manages money may go about her business in any number of ways, from highly conservative investing to wildly aggressive risk taking. She may be beating the market handily, or she may be barely squeaking by.

Im not trying to say that the term hedge fund means nothing. Heres the short answer: A hedge fund is a lightly regulated investment partnership that uses a range of investment techniques and invests in a wide array of assets to generate a higher return for a given level of risk than whats expected of normal investments. In many cases, but hardly all, hedge funds are managed to generate a consistent level of return, regardless of what the market does. Before I get to the longer, more complicated explanation of hedge funds, however, it helps to know exactly what hedging is.

Hedging means reducing risk, which is what many hedge funds are designed to do. Maybe youve hedged a risky bet with a friend before by making a conservative bet on the side. But a hedge fund manager doesnt reduce risk by investing in conservative assets. Although risk is usually a function of return (the higher the risk, the higher the return), a hedge fund manager has ways to reduce risk without cutting into investment income. She can look for ways to get rid of some risks while taking on others with an expected good return, often by using sophisticated techniques.

For example, a fund manager can take stock-market risk out of the funds portfolio by selling stock index futures. Or she can increase her return from a relatively low risk investment by borrowing money, known as leveraging. If youre interested in investing in hedge funds, you need to know how the fund managers are making money.

Return is a function of risk. The challenge for the hedge fund manager is to eliminate some risk while gaining return on investments " not a simple task, which is why hedge fund managers get paid handsomely if they succeed.