The Hedge Funds Weblog

Confidence among North American investors fell particularly sharply from a revised level of 75.1 to 50.8. Elsewhere, the declines were less dramatic, with European confidence falling just 1.5 points to 79.6, and Asian confidence declining 0.6 points from 87.1 to 86.5.

"This month we saw a dramatic and unprecedented decline in investor confidence to a new record low, led by investors in North America," commented Froot. "We saw broad and important reductions of risk across investor portfolios previously at times like the Asian Crisis in 1997 and the Russian-LTCM crisis in 1998. However, even the strong broad-based selling of risk we saw during those events appears small compared with the current outflows. The combination of financial crisis along with truly global macroeconomic risk of deep recession has been causing a complete re-evaluation of risk across a wide investment community centered on US institutional investors."

"When you remember that this measure of investor confidence is not a survey, but rather is based on the actual trades of institutional investors, the readings are particularly striking," added O'Connell. "The period over which this reallocation was measured in investor portfolios, September 17 to October 15, saw the largest single reallocation away from risky assets that we have witnessed in the data since it first became available in 1994."

• Hedging Without A Hedge Fund
• Single Family Offices Investing in Hedge Funds
• Seen that? - Hedge Fund Managers Wine Collecting Club
• Seen that? - Hedging Without A Hedge Fund
• Seen that? - You're Fired!
• Investing and Hedge Funds for Dummies
• NY Hedge Fund Manger Joins With Canadian Giant
• Seen that? - Hedge fund facts from the morning Paper
• Seen that? - Kennedy Closes Deal With Hedge Fund for 119 Hurricane Struck Homes
• Seen that? - Connecticut Creates Hedge Fund Oversight Unit