April 2005 was a down month for the six hedge fund benchmarks covered by Dow Jones Hedge Fund Indexes. The convertible arbitrage, equity long/short (U.S.), event driven, merger arbitrage, equity market neutral and distressed securities strategies lost -3.73%, -1.90%, -1.01%, -0.92%, -0.47%, and -0.31, respectively.
On a year-to-date basis, the merger arbitrage and distressed securities strategies showed gains of 0.36% and 0.20%, respectively. The 2005 environment has been particularly difficult for convertible arbitrage and equity long/short (U.S.) strategies which are down -6.89% and -3.49% for the year. The event driven and equity market neutral strategies were down -0.23% and -0.21% in 2005.
Other asset classes as represented by the domestic equity and fixed income markets did not fair any better in April. On a float-adjusted basis, the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 posted -2.21% for the month of April (-2.26% on a full-cap basis) extending the losses of the broad equity markets to -4.38% for 2005 (-4.59% on a full-cap basis). The Dow Jones Corporate Bond Index was up 1.10% for the month, reducing the YTD losses to -0.19%. While the world equity markets as measured by the Dow Jones World Total Market Index lost -2.35% in April increasing their cumulative losses to -3.21% for the year.