Dear Alpha Mail Subscriber:

As the days get longer and the weather warms up in the Northern Hemisphere, hedge fund observers seem to be dividing themselves into two camps: the "green shoots" camp and the "silent spring" camp. 

Green shoots theorists point to the bottoming-out of AUM, lifting of redemption gates, positive returns, continuing institutional interest in alternative investments, and a return to the low market correlation that has been the hallmark of hedge fund performance in the past.

Meanwhile, the silent spring advocates argue that April's performance was way below the market's and that endemic problems with fees and transparency remain alive and well (with the recent focus on placement agents representing a volatile combination of both factors).

For years, analysts have been predicting that a forest fire would someday sweep through the hedge fund landscape, fuelled by years of overgrowth and weakened and dying underbrush.  Well that fire came in 2008 and scrubbed the forest of its easily-combustible material, leaving only the strongest, most mature trees standing and opening up the forest floor to the sunlight required to nurture the green shoots of new funds.

It appears that Mother Nature's spring cleaning of the hedge fund sector may be coming to completion.  So here's to the green shoots becoming the oak trees of the future...