[bush-bby]

But that’s not the benefit of putting your money in a hedge fund at all, the benefit is hedging against losses, so that you don’t have to worry about losing money when everyone else is.

[dahfizz]

It's literally called a hedge fund, not sure why people would assume they are after the highest & riskiest returns.

[t_mann]

Historically, hedging was the reason when the first such funds launched that allowed them to use a specific regulatory loophole. The name has stuck around much more so than the strategy, though, nowadays there are entire classes of hedge funds that don't necessarily work like that anymore (eg long-only, special situations arbitrage, global macro,...). Nowadays it pretty much just means a specific legal structure, if it means anything at all, since it's become such a widely used term.