The Latin American hedge fund space has seen remarkable growth over the past decade. As of July 2011, the number of funds was nearly four times that as of end-2000, while assets over the same period recorded an increase over 23-fold. There are currently 442 operational hedge funds, managing over US$64 billion in assets.
After seeing phenomenal growth from 2000 to 2007, Latin American hedge funds like most others faced surmounting challenges in 2008. This was amid the credit crisis, which originated in the US, that spread to other economies taking a toll on both the underlying markets and hedge fund returns across the board. Despite these events, the Eurekahedge Latin American Hedge Fund Index lost only 5.08% for 2008, suggesting hedge fund returns across the region to be resilient to market turmoil.
