What is a Hege Fund?

Question

What is a Hege Fund?

Answer 1

A fund, usually used by wealthy individuals and institutions, which is allowed to use aggressive strategies that are unavailable to mutual funds, including selling short, leverage, program trading, swaps, arbitrage, and derivatives. Hedge funds are exempt from many of the rules and regulations governing other mutual funds, which allows them to accomplish aggressive investing goals. They are restricted by law to no more than 100 investors per fund, and as a result most hedge funds set extremely high minimum investment amounts, ranging anywhere from $250,000 to over $1 million. As with traditional mutual funds, investors in hedge funds pay a management fee; however, hedge funds also collect a percentage of the profits (usually 20%).

Answer 2

It is difficult to provide a general definition of a hedge fund. Initially, hedge funds would sell short the stock market, thus providing a "hedge" against any stock market declines. Today the term is applied more broadly to any type of private investment partnership. There are thousands of different hedge funds globally. Their primary objective is to make lots of money, and to make money by investing in all sorts of different investments and investments strategies. Most of these strategies are more aggressive than than the investments made by mutual funds