What Is the Difference in Hedge Funds and a Private Equity Fund?

Hedge funds are run by market traders. These investment professionals move in and out of financial securities searching for the best possible profits. Hedge fund managers take high risks in the financial markets to generate high profits. Private equity firms invest in businesses either by purchasing them outright or by acquiring select assets. Often, the businesses in which private equity firms invest are troubled, and the investors seek to improve upon performance using their own expertise. Eventually, private equity firms seek an exit strategy through which they sell investments to strategic companies or pursue an initial public offering.

Prior to the financial crisis of 2008, both private equity firms and hedge funds used similar fee structures -- charging investors 2 percent of assets managed and 20 percent for performance. Both asset management groups were willing to make certain compromises following the recession when investment performance suffered. Private equity firms began directing an average of 83 percent of deal fees they earned from portfolio companies to investors, some 13 percent better than pre-crisis days, according to a 2011 article on "The Economist" website. In 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, certain hedge funds lowered fees by 1 percent and 5 percent for management and performance, respectively, according to a 2008 article on the Bloomberg website.

Liquidity represents an asset manager's ability to access cash. While private equity funds and hedge funds are both considered less liquid than traditional investment vehicles, private equity funds are the least liquid of the two, according to findings by the Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans cited on the U.S. Department of Labor website in 2011. Additionally, the current value of assets is harder to assess in a private equity portfolio versus a hedge fund due to the nature of the assets that private equity funds hold.

In exchange for fees that are higher than rates that traditional asset managers charge, alternative asset managers are expected to produce returns that trump those delivered elsewhere. Nevertheless, in the first 11 months of 2012, average hedge fund returns of just under 5 percent paled in comparison to the 12 percent delivered by broader market indexes, according to a 2012 article on the Reuters website. In the first quarter of 2012, private equity returns similarly underperformed the broader markets, generating profits of just over 5 percent versus nearly 13 percent returns produced by the S&P 500 index, based on data provided by investment consultant Cambridge Associates cited in a 2012 article on the Pensions and Investments website.