Hedge funds hurt as investors withdraw US$28b in 3 months

IT has been a bruising year for hedge funds. Big bets have been disastrous, investors have voiced discontent and some managers have been forced to rewrite their playbooks or call it quits.

And now, there is new data to rub salt into the industry's wounds: Over the last three months, investors pulled US$28 billion out of hedge funds, according to the research firm Hedge Fund Research. It is the biggest quarterly outflow of dollars since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009.

So far this year, more than US$50 billion has flowed out of hedge funds - much of that from the industry's biggest and best-known hedge funds, Hedge Fund Research said in its latest industry report, released on Thursday.