Hedge funds may be on the rebound, according to a new paper from Peltz International as reported in Forbes. Last year, hedge funds recorded an 11.6% return, fueled by renewed investor confidence and a strong performance over the last 9 months of 2020.

Hedge fund managers were able to take advantage of the opportunities created by market turbulence and volatility as a result of the pandemic and politics, with some managers reporting record-high returns. Equity funds did extremely well, particularly ones with exposure to technology, as did activists and macro managers. According to the article, there’s a long list of fund managers with $1 billion+ in assets that posted double-digit returns in 2020, including Pershing Square (70%), Tiger Global (48.4%), Falcon Edge Capital (43%), Brevan Howard (27.4%), Kuvari Partners (26.3%), and Citadel (24.4%).

With hedge funds already up nearly 10% by the end of August, this year’s performance is also on track to strike double-digits. According to the Peltz paper, many experts view this as a sign that hedge funds are returning to favor after they lost it in 2008. But some analysts believe that investors aren’t allocating that much more money into hedge funds, and that outsize returns are coming from compounding growth, while others think that because hedge funds charge higher fees, they must be more results-oriented, and that non-directional hedge funds are more attractive as in a low-interest rate situation as a fixed-income complement.

And still others believe that the growth is due to heavy investing in cryptocurrencies and private equity. It’s no secret that many well-known managers have thrown their weight behind crypto, and hedge funds are moving more and more into private equity, with PE and venture capital funds outperforming hedge funds 14.2% over the last decade.