IN 1990 hedge funds were still rare birds; 500-odd funds managed around $40 billion, mostly for rich individuals. Few people understood what they did or bothered to find out. By the end of 2015, the sector had mushroomed to include nearly 9,000 funds managing roughly $3 trillion. Along with private equity, the industry was classed as an “alternative asset”, attractive to pension funds and endowments. But a recent wave of fund closures, and the expectation that more will follow, suggest the industry’s era of stratospheric growth may be in the past. On the surface, fund closures are the norm in...