How did hedge funds perform in 2021?

The PivotalPath Composite Hedge Fund Index returned 7.8% in 2021. Equity Quant leads at 14.7%; Volatility Trading is weakest at 0.2%.

2021 returns by strategy

2021 calendar-year returns are cumulative within the year, not annualised, and are therefore not comparable figure-for-figure with the annualised columns beside them.
Index	2021	3y ann.	5y ann.	Volatility	Correlation to S&P
Equity Quant	14.7%	10.7%	9.5%	4.5%	0.42
Credit	10.8%	8.4%	6.5%	4.9%	0.52
Event Driven	10.5%	11.4%	6.6%	6.9%	0.66
Equity Diversified	9.3%	13.6%	7.8%	7.0%	0.81
Multi-Strategy	9.2%	10.3%	7.5%	4.2%	0.48
Managed Futures	8.8%	3.2%	4.7%	9.3%	-0.16
Composite	7.8%	11.0%	7.2%	4.8%	0.62
Global Macro	4.3%	7.6%	7.0%	5.9%	0.04
Equity Sector	0.7%	20.0%	9.0%	8.4%	0.72
Volatility Trading	0.2%	3.7%	4.4%	5.0%	-0.20
S&P 500 Total Return	28.7%	—	—	—	—

What happened

The S&P 500 total return was 28.7% over the same period, so the Composite finished behind the market. The spread between the strongest and weakest strategy was 14.5% — which is the figure an allocator selecting between them is exposed to.

A single calendar year is a short window and says little about a strategy’s long-run behaviour. The since-inception figures are on each index page.

Returns by year, every year

Returns are monthly, net of all fees, in USD. The complete return history is published free under a Creative Commons Attribution licence at github.com/pivotalpath/publicdata, and the full construction methodology — including the treatment of selection, survivorship and backfill bias — is in the index methodology. Past performance does not predict future returns.