I am not a finance expert. My venture capital activities are really the first time I am operating in the financial field. However, a good deal of my friends have gone into finance (mostly investment banking) after school, and a good percentage of those are now on the less traditional side of finance now; namely, at hedge funds.
As a result, I hear quite a bit about hedge fund performance claims. Among friends, there has been long standing discussion about how if each of these claims are true and accurate, then either these guys are smarter and richer than anyone else we know, or some of these number are inflated.
Well, just came across this article discussing how the latter explanation may just be the reason.
Cem Sertoglu 
From today’s WSJ … kinda interesting .. while hedge guys are surely prone to (massive) exaggeration, its highly possible folks managing Eastern European funds are already up >10% this year.
Time to switch careers?!!
1:39 p.m.: Hedge funds have been faring well this year — especially in Eastern Europe. Overall, hedge funds returned 3.8% through February, according to Hedge Fund Research. That compares with a 2.6% gain by the S&P 500. Emerging-market hedge funds gained 7.52% overall, with Eastern European funds at the top with returns of 10.5%. The primary reason is a commodity-driven boom in Russia, said Ian Hague, co-portfolio manager of the Firebird Fund, a New York hedge fund that invests in Eastern Europe. “It’s really a kind of golden moment for equities for a place like Russia,” he said, since oil prices are boosting the country’s stocks and putting rubles in consumers’ pockets.
Another factor driving Russia’s market higher is a reduction on the limitation of shares available to foreign investors of the Russian oil giant Gazprom, which has seen its American depositary receipts rise 13% year-to-date, said Mr. Hague. But there are signs of a slowdown. Through March 8, Morgan Stanley Capital International’s Eastern Europe index is up 14.8% for the year, but that includes a 4.3% decline in March.
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