Activist Hedge Funds Stop Beating S&P 500 as Assets Swell
Activist investors in the U.S. lost an edge as they became increasingly popular. An activist-fund index compiled by Hedge Fund Research Inc. fell behind the Standard & Poor’s 500 Total Return Index, which includes dividends, since 2005 after leading by as much as 62 percentage points. The comparison was made by George Gianarikas, an analyst at Fundstrat Global Advisors LLC, in a report Wednesday. Assets managed by activist funds worldwide more than tripled to $174 billion between 2010 and 2015, according to data compiled by Activist Insight Online and cited in the research.