In March Dalbar, a financial services market research firm based in Boston, released a study of equity fund performance over the 20 years through last December.

FORBES: Fund Traders Are From Mars

The money-tracking firm found no persistent link between past equity-fund performance and future returns.

FORBES: Betting On The House

Instead our statisticians took a year-by-year average of equity performance, weighted by each fund's assets at midyear, and strung those five numbers together to get the family's stock market performance.

FORBES: Who's in Charge Here?

Nor does he analyse how hedge-fund performance compares with other asset classes, such as private equity.

ECONOMIST: The success of hedge funds

Suppose, for instance, that you decide to invest in an exchange-traded fund that mirrors the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, which measures equity market performance in 26 emerging economies.

FORBES: By Zack Miller

We calculated composite performance for the U.S. equity funds in 12 large fund families, going back five years.

FORBES: Who's in Charge Here?

Their competence and duty to advise seemingly encompasses anything a fund may encounter- asset allocation, manager and fund performance, personnel turnover at managers, real estate, private equity, international and emerging markets, hedge funds, fund of funds, brokerage-everything but consultant-related issues.

FORBES: The Duty To Investigate Pension Consultant Conflicts (September 1, 2001)

Instead they return an amount based upon the performance of an underlying equity instrument, be it an index, a hedge fund or even a single stock.

FORBES: Another Option

Additionally, they picked up the WisdomTree Emerging Markets High-Yielding Equity Fund (nyse: DEM - news - people ), which tracks the performance of the WisdomTree Emerging Markets High-Yielding Equity index.

FORBES: Gurus Cruise With Hertz, Bail On Medtronic

But hedge fund and private equity rich guys have successfully deflected away repeated attempts to change the way they are taxed on performance fees.

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