A recent article from Economist talks about the emerging trend of mutual funds leveraging more and more financial derivatives, just like what hedge funds do, to improve returns. Especially in Europe, due to sort of deregulation on mutual funds, they are allowed to take risky positions for a small portion of total assets while asking for relatively fair management fees comparing to hedge funds. Yet in USA, SEC still holds the most rigorous rule of the world (Will this reduce the competitive advantages of US market? see another face article) so that large funds are almost clones of S&P500. Due to that restriction, the classical portfolio optimization methodology is almost useless as long as funds holds more than two dozens of stocks. The name of the game is "what to buy" instead of "how much to buy". By using modern sophisticated financial derivatives, mutual funds can find a better way to protect portfolios or to seek higher returns. The just-so-so records of most hedge funds in recent years also make people question about the reasons of high management fees.
After all, we always expect more than what we pay.