Five of the six hedge fund investment styles that are covered by in a Dow Jones collection of performance figures made returns in April, once fees were deducted, according to new figures.

But since the turn of the year, only one of the six strategies – event driven – has delivered a gain for investors, at a lowly 0.8 per cent, which compares with the -5.01 per cent loss recorded on the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 index of global equities, according to a Dow Jones Hedge Fund Indices report.

In April, equity long/short funds led the way with a post-fee gain of 3.54 per cent. Event driven funds came in second with a return of 2.60 per cent, and distressed securities rounded out the top three with a gain of 1.39 per cent.

Merger arbitrage and equity market neutral followed with returns of 0.27 per cent and 0.08 per cent, respectively. Convertible arbitrage posted the only losses for April with a return of -1.95 per cent.

The main Hennessee Hedge Fund index advanced 2.2 per cent in April 2008, but is still down 1.8 per cent so far in the year. For comparison, in the month the S&P 500 was up 4.8 per cent (off 5.7 per cent year to date), the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 4.5 per cent (off 3.4 per cent YTD) and the NASDAQ Composite Index advanced 5.9 per cent (off 9.0% YTD). Bonds generally declined in April: the Lehman Aggregate Bond Index fell 0.2 per cent (up 2.0 per cent YTD).