I’m sorry, I understand that this is an old topic, but I’ve searched for Hedge Fund Managers and search resulted with “hedge fund managers produce little or nothing of any value to anyone.”
I did took this personal, because I’ve worked for a HF manager, but at the same time I do understand the confusion. Most people don’t understand what is it that Hedge Funds do, and when they hear that “absolute return” part, almost everyone reacts the same. To be completely honest, I don’t have any experience with U.S. regulative forms, because I’ve worked in Singapore, and the government there is keeping all records and all regulations transparent as they possibly can be. I’m researching this company at the moment:
http://www.rikvin.com/industry-guides/set-up-a-hedge-fund-company-in-singapore/
The company I used to work for moved to a somewhat different form of business and they don’t have an online presentation, but as you can see here for yourself, HF managers in Singapore really earn that “pricey” fee, which in Singapore isn’t as high as in US. And please let us not forget that reaching that position takes a lot of sacrifice, experience, and some really hard work.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/financialcareers/08/hedge-fund-career.asp
Of course, I was just a small part of a great team, and my portion of work was perhaps insignificant but hard, but this comment about HF managers not doing practically anything is really an understatement. And their work is not destructive, if they know what they are doing.
However, I do have to agree about “investors” who are aware of their mass influence and decide to invest in stocks just to get rid of them once the price get’s high. That’s just plainly wrong.