In a previous article, I provided mean and median annual returns for various hedge fund strategies over a timeframe running from 1997-2009. These came in to the upper single-digits. In early-2015, David Einhorn, head of Greenlight Capital, announced that he was no longer targeting 20% as his annualized return target given the difficulty of attaining that mark after several years of 0% interest rates and monetary stimulus by the Federal Reserve had inflated asset prices. Now as markets have largely flat-lined over the past eighteen months (the S&P 500 first breached 2100 in February 2015), equity market investing has become particularly difficult in terms of achieving the outsized returns seen in the decades preceding the financial crisis. In my personal opinion, I believe top quartile equity funds will still have a shot at 12%-15% annualized going forward. But only the very best performers will consistently yield 20% or better, especially those that have some flexibility in their strategies, as equity is clearly one of the most challenging fields at the moment.