November was bad, but not as bad as it seemed from early indicators, according to Dow Jones. To be sure, five of six of the Dow Jones Hedge Fund Strategy Benchmarks were in the red last month, but none was down as much as predicted.

Distressed securities funds were the worst off, dropping 2.25% in November (but up 0.94% year-to-date), followed by equity long/short, which was down 2.04%. Still, the latter remained the top-performing strategy tracked by Dow Jones with a year-to-date return of 18.05%.

The other losers include merger arbitrage (-1.51% in November, +16.54% YTD), event-driven (-1.39%, +5.91% YTD) and convertible arbitrage (-0.75%, + 2.97% YTD).

The only strategy in positive ground last month was equity-market neutral, which added 0.34%. Still, it remains the worst-performing strategy in 2007, with a year-to-date return of just 0.61%.

Preliminary figures from earlier this week indicated that hedge funds could be down by almost 3% last month.