Bloomberg reported that European mutual funds may be able to give ordinary investors a taste of hedge fund returns, if their managers convince regulators to let them buy derivatives of hedge-fund indexes.
Mutual funds should be allowed to bet on the performance of hedges just as they can for other financial indicators such as stock indexes, industry groups have argued at a hearing in Paris of the Committee of European Securities Regulators, which disallowed such investments last year.
A change would let European Union-regulated funds put some of their 5.5 trillion euros ($7 trillion) of assets into derivatives tracking hedge-fund portfolios by next year. Allowing indexes would open another avenue for regular people to share in the gains of the funds limited to the wealthy and institutions.