Hedge Fund Survey

The FCIC conducted a survey to collect information on the financial activities of hedge funds. During the crisis, hedge funds were subject to fewer reporting requirements than many other asset managers. This survey sought to gather information on their holdings and their relationships to other financial institutions and markets. Approximately 170 hedge fund managers responded, representing approximately $1.2 trillion in assets under management.

Methodology

To protect the confidentiality of individual responses, the FCIC contracted with the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. NORC collected the responses, cleaned and compiled the data, and presented aggregated data to FCIC staff.

Survey form and documentation:

Hedge Fund Survey Form (Excel)
NORC Documentation (PDF)

Aggregate data and related charts:

Hedge Fund Survey Database (Excel)
Charts form Hedge Fund Survey (Powerpoint)

Disclaimer: This survey is not statistically representative of the industry as a whole. Because the FCIC was able to survey only hedge funds still in existence, the results are subject to survivorship bias. Some inconsistencies may appear in the accompanying data: a sum of the component variables may not equal their reported whole due to slight discrepancies in the sets of firm data present in each calculation. The survey form may have truncated digits beyond the decimal point for data points in some responses. Many firms created ad-hoc systems to generate the data requested in the FCIC’s survey, so the resulting data may contain more errors than regular, standardized financial reports. Survey respondents may also have misclassified types of financial contracts. NORC staff performed statistical analysis to identify outliers or incorrect units. Some of these data were then imputed or flagged. FCIC staff had no access to individual survey responses submitted to NORC.
After the FCIC’s final report went to press, FCIC and NORC staff continued to refine the dataset. As a result, there may be minor discrepancies between statistics presented in this database and any corresponding statistics printed in the FCIC’s final report.
Although NORC and the FCIC made substantial efforts to avoid releasing confidential, firm-level survey information, the FCIC cannot guarantee that it is impossible to deduce firm-level data from the aggregated statistics.