Besides, "market return" is usually understood to be some equity index, while hedge funds can also invest in non-equity markets (currency, bonds, etc). Still,

Besides, "market return" is usually understood to be some equity index, while hedge funds can also invest in non-equity markets (currency, bonds, etc). Still, what wtvanhest is saying is relevant since in practice a lot of the hedge funds are trading against each other. So it's not "shocking" if their aggregate return is low. I haven't read the original articles but O'Reilly's post is very misleading.