Why It Seems Every Hedge Fund Wants To Go Activist On Companies These Days In One Chart

Carl Icahn's on his soap box about Apple, Paul Singer's going after Juniper, and it seems like new activist hedge funds are popping up everywhere - some even helmed by industry veterans tweaking their strategy, like Jason Ader and Andrew Wallach.

So if it seems like hedge funds are going after companies more aggressively these days, it's because the strategy has been working, according to data compiled by eVestment.

Check out the chart below, comparing hedge fund returns by strategy in 2012-2013.

Activist funds fared better than funds with other strategies, returning 19.07% and 15.21% in 2013 and 2012 respectively.

In 2013 long/short strategies came in second, returning 16.12% and in 2012 distressed strategy funds got the number two spot returning 14.75%. Managed futures funds, as you can see, have been the worst performers over the last two years.

You can check out the rest of the numbers in a table below the chart.