We looked at the quarterly increase/decrease in equity market values per fund stratified by fund type relative to the quarterly increase/decrease in the overall market to guage the sentiment of institutional investors towards equities generally. The results show that hedge fund were much more restrained than other institutional funds (i.e. mutual funds) in increasing their expsoure to equities during Q4. Equity market value per fund increased 2.2% in Q4 for hedge funds compared to an increase of over 5% for institutional investors. Both figures are less than the overall percentage increase in value for the overall market during the quarter (+8.6%) indicating a net reduction in allocations to equities. This marks the third quarter in a row where hedge funds and institutional investors have reduced thier equity exposures based on this measure. In contrast, hedge funds are increasing their exposure to other asset classees such as commodities.
