Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown

[Amianthus]

The term "hedge" has little to do with the actual transaction. It's much like the term "junk" bonds. They weren't junk, they actually made lot's of people very rich.

Hedge funds "hedge" investments, and "junk bonds" have poor credit ratings. Both are high risk investment types, and along with a higher risk generally comes a higher reward.

[Xavier_Onassis]

"Junk" bond funds are rarely rated the highest among bond funds, and rarely outperform regular stock funds, at least in my experience.

The biggest problem with hedge funds is that they are very risky and there is much less information available to compare them with. You can find out oodles of info on any standard load or no load fund in Yahoo financial or other websites regarding managers, percentages of total investment, and history. Hedge funds seem to be wrapped in secrecy.