by Svea Herbst-Bayliss (Reuters) - For some of the hedge fund industry's titans, including Nelson Peltz and William Ackman, 2016 is starting with heavy losses as big bets on General Electric, Valeant, and Mondelez have been battered by the market's abrupt drop. But as a group, hedge funds have navigated the sharp sell-off relatively smoothly, finally boasting better performance than the equity markets they have trailed for the last years. With the Standard & Poor's 500 index tumbling another 3 percent on Wednesday to push the stock market benchmark down 10 percent for the year-to-date, most investors are feeling pain....