Canned beans and shotguns were about the only long positions that paid off for hedge fund managers this year. As the poison spread to every asset class bar government bonds, returns were not much better, and in many cases much worse, than for managers with more restrictive investment mandates.

Billion-dollar titans such as DB Zwirn and Polygon threw in the towel. Five of the best-paid managers endured a pantomime grilling by Congress. Authorities muttered about more regulation (even though it was the most regulated players in the financial markets, namely banks, that were going bankrupt in droves). Bans on short-selling removed funds’ main mechanism for risk management, leading to an acceleration in the withdrawal of capital when the market needed it most. Redemptions flooded in, many of them from institutions that had over-committed to private equity and needed cash wherever they could find it.