Dow Jones Indexes reports that all of its hedge fund strategy benchmarks were down in October.

The convertible arbitrage strategy did best in October, managing a monthly return of -0.09%. Although, the strategy is down 4.99% for the year.

Distressed securities dropped 0.87% in the month. But the strategy still has a cumulative gain of 4.89%, keeping it as the leading strategy on a YTD basis.

The event driven strategy was down 1.99% for the month, reducing its year-to-date gains to 3.54%. Equity market neutral was down 0.27%; dropping its year-to-dategain to 1.17%. Merger arbitrage posted a 1.37% drop for the month; on a year-to-date basis it is up 1.46%. Equity long/short (U.S.) lost 2.06% in October; however, the benchmark is down only 0.56% on a YTD basis.

The fixed income asset class performed poorly with the Dow Jones Corporate Bond Index returning -1.66% for the month and -0.55% for the year. The world equity markets as measured by the Dow Jones World Total Market Index also fell 2.59% in October, thereby reducing their cumulative returns to 4.98% for the year.