For hedge funds, 2018 is looking bad, certainly worse than 2013 and perhaps as bad as 2011. According to major indexes, hedge funds in aggregate were up around 1 percent through the first three quarters of the year, only to lose about 3 percent in October, the most in more than five years. But indexes have issues. They aggregate different types of funds and are dominated by long-short equity funds, which are the largest category and the most volatile. Funds choose whether to report or not, and report on different bases. Valuations can be stale or uncertain.