[swalsh]

I think it kind of does, in a way. Let's say I go long on bitcoin, but purchase futures that are short on it. If bitcoin plummets, I may lose on the bitcoin position, but the futures I purchased will go up, limiting my losses.

Southwest did something similar with oil a few years ago. Fuel is one of the biggest costs to an airline, so when the price of oil spiked a few years ago, many airlines had to raise ticket prices + add fees to make up for the loss. Southwest, on the other hand, had oil futures betting on the cost of oil going up. When the spike happened, their costs went up too, but they could make up for it with the futures.

[otakucode]

That's called 'hedging' and is literally all hedge funds do. So long as markets remain 'sensible' its a brilliant strategy. Markets, of course, do not remain sensible for long. I'm presently listening to 'When Genius Failed', a book about the implosion and utter failure of Long Term Capital Management, one of the biggest hedge funds who learned just how utterly batshit irrational the market can actually be.

[0xBABAD00C]

> That's called 'hedging' and is literally all hedge funds do.

Uhhh, no

[sjcsjc]

Yeah the term hedge fund seems something of a misnomer nowadays.

For anyone interested:

The term "hedge fund" originated from the paired long and short positions that the first of these funds used to hedge market risk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_fund

[perl4ever]

For practical purposes, these days, I believe a "hedge fund" is basically defined by its high fees (2&20), lack of regulation and disclosure compared to a mutual fund, and its restriction to "qualified investors" who are supposed to be wealthy enough to absorb losses. Certainly quite a few so-called hedge funds get a lot of publicity for the opposite of hedging - making wildly risky bets to try to beat benchmarks.