If that was too much to ask for, they should have been safe in the thought that the word “hedge” had something to do with preserving their capital when the economy turned rough.

At the very least, they should have expected a decent excuse when it all went so wrong.

Unfortunately, they have been disappointed on all three counts — and perhaps most let down on the third. As hedge funds, including GLG Partners Inc. and Man Group Plc, have turned in miserable results, the excuses have been shameful.

Lame, evasive and unimaginative. Schoolboys who were too busy playing PlayStation to finish their math homework have come up with better reasons for failure than the multimillionaire money managers of London and New York have offered.

We have seen “truly historical events,” Noam Gottesman, chairman and co-chief executive officer of GLG Partners, said in his results statement this month. Those, presumably, would be the events that pushed GLG’s share price down to less than US$3 now from more than US$14 last year.

The markets have “witnessed unprecedented levels of turmoil,” Peter Clarke, chief executive officer of Man Group, said while unveiling a 25 percent decline in net income. The company’s shares are valued at about 210 pence now compared with a high of 626 during the past year.

Managers at RAB Special Situations Co., meanwhile, seem to think the slight drop in its share price — less than 25 pence now from 111 pence in May — is all someone else’s fault. “This has been a difficult period for the company and economic markets generally,” Quentin Spicer, a company director, said as he presented its results.

For men on salaries that would fund a small nation for a couple of years, this is a “dog-ate-my-homework” level of apology. It simply won’t do. There are three reasons why the explanations that the funds are offering for their poor performance are so inadequate.

First, there is no point telling us things we already know. Even the dippiest airhead must be aware the markets have been turbulent the last few months. Sophisticated investors in hedge funds certainly know about it. Of course, the markets have been turbulent. It’s an observation, not an explanation.

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