As with most hedge fund indices in July, Hedge Fund Research’s HFRI Indices offer very little in the way of good news.

The overall HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index fell 2.17% last month and is down 3.43% on the year. Just five HFRI substrategies were in the black in July, and just seven have positive returns in what has been a very bleak year-to-date.

Macro funds lost 2.78% on the month (up 3.71% year-to-date) and equity hedge funds declines 2.63% (down 6.29% YTD). Event-driven funds fell by 1.33% (down 3.61% YTD) and relative-value funds by 0.36% (down 1.72% YTD). Emerging markets funds continued to have difficulty in 2008, falling by 3.07% in July to bring their year-to-date loss to 9.76%.

Among substrategies, energy and basic materials funds were the biggest losers with an average decline of 6.97% (down 3.58% YTD), followed by systematic diversified funds, which fell 3.9%, but remain the year’s second-best performer with year-to-date return of 7.65%. Russia and Eastern Europe was the worst-performing region among emerging markets, with a 7.05% drop (down 10.69% YTD).

The only strategies in the black in July were fixed-income asset-backed relative value funds (up 1.31% in July, up 3.22% YTD), yield alternatives funds (up 0.55%, down 2.55% YTD), merger arbitrage funds (up 0.37%, down 0.22% YTD), private issue/Regulation D funds (up 0.29%, up 1.14% YTD) and short bias funds (up 0.07%, up 10% YTD).

Funds of hedge funds fell 2.73%, and are now down 5.03%, according the HFRI Fund of Funds Composite Index.