What is a "hedge fund"? It's a legal category, like "mutual fund". The "hedge fund" category is basically a "none of the above" legal category, meaning that hedge funds, alone among money management companies, have essentially no restrictions on the kinds of assets they are allowed to trade. To start a hedge fund, all you have to do is be a "qualified investor" with $5 million in capital, or be a "sophisticated investor". That means that as a hedge fund you can be essentially any Tom, Dick, or Harry, and you can try essentially any strategy. You could have macaque monkeys pick stocks and call it a "hedge fund". The catch-all "hedge fund" category attracts many of the best ideas in the investing world, but also many of the worst. And there's a lot more bad ideas than good ones. And you can't just tell which is bad and which is good by looking at size and fame, because many of the bad ones get lucky and get some temporary good returns, which results in people handing them giant wads of cash (which they then proceed to lose, while taking a giant fee).