Amid a growing stream of troubling economic news, hedge fund redemptions hit $42.3 billion in December 2018, which makes it the largest monthly outflow in “at least five years,” according to the Barclay Fund Flow Indicator, published recently by BarclayHedge, a division of Backstop Solutions, maker of customer relationship management (CRM) software suites for financial services firms. The hedge fund redemptions rose “significantly in December, as nervous investors fretted about stock market volatility, global economic uncertainty, major commodity price downturns and other economic factors,” according to BarclayHedge officials.