Asia-focused hedge funds are outperforming those with primary exposure in Europe or the US in 2017, as China and India-focused hedge funds saw returns of over 20% in 2017 YTD (end-July).

Asia-focused funds saw returns of 12.31% in 2017 YTD, compared to 9.63% in Africa and the Middle East, 5.27% in developed Europe, and 4.73% in North America. India-focused hedge funds saw strong performance, and are up 24.9% in 2017 YTD. Similarly, China-focused funds are up 21.43%. Only 3.5% of all developed market funds reporting through July have done better than India funds in 2017, and only 2.2% have performance better than those focused on China, according to recent data from eVestments.

Taking another angle, by hedge fund region of domicile, Asia also continued to dominate, seeing returns of 10.31% 2017 YTD, compared to just 3.13% in Europe and 4.24% in the US. There were also particularly strong performances in Hong Kong (13.84%) and China (12.82%).

For perspective, overall in the industry, hedge funds returned an average 1.21% in July, bringing the YTD returns to 4.77%. July marked the ninth consecutive month of positive aggregate industry returns.

“With much of the industry benefiting from surging equity markets, one would expect investors to be satisfied. However, there are segments which are not keeping pace, or are struggling to extract gains from how current global themes are affecting markets, and their relative valuations in the short-term. The result is likely an investor base which is feeling less positive about recent allocations than broad performance results would indicate,” says eVestments.