The hedge fund industry felt the impact of the spreading COVID-19 pandemic in March as hedge fund redemptions jumped dramatically to $85.6 billion, a steep increase from February’s $8.1 billion in industry outflows.
March’s redemptions represented 2.7 percent of industry assets, according to the Barclay Fund Flow Indicator published by BarclayHedge, a division of Backstop Solutions.
A March trading loss of trading loss of $229.1 billion brought total hedge fund industry assets to $2.86 trillion at the end of April, down from $3.21 trillion at the end of February.
Data from 7,100 funds (excluding CTAs) in the BarclayHedge database showed continental Europe as the hardest hit region in March’s redemption total, with nearly $38.3 billion in outflows. U.S. hedge funds shed nearly $31.6 billion in assets, while funds in the U.K. experienced nearly $24.7 billion in redemptions.
“As the magnitude of the COVID-19 crisis became increasingly clear through J
