Would someone please explain what hedge funds are? Keep It Simple Please.
http://www.gabelli.com/news/mario-hedge_102500.html
Hedge funds used to be funds that mitigated/reduced risk by betting in both directions — that stocks would rise and fall using two different instruments, saying, regular stock purchases against shorting a stock. They were very specialized and very few.
Today they’re just huge pots of cash — many of them in the billions of dollars — that invest in everything from traditional stocks to (get this) movies. There are something like 7,000 active hedge funds today.