A frequent comment is that investment funds with a nonnormal return distribution
cannot be adequately evaluated by using the classic Sharpe ratio. Research on
hedge fund data that compared the Sharpe ratio with other performance measures,
however, found virtually identical rank ordering by the various measures. The
study reported here analyzed a dataset of 38,954 funds investing in seven asset
classes over 1996–2005 and found that the previous result is true not only
for hedge funds but also for mutual funds investing in stocks, bonds, real
estate, funds of hedge funds, commodity trading advisers, and commodity pool
operators. In short, choosing a performance measure is not critical to fund
evaluation and the Sharpe ratio is generally adequate.