High Water Marks
The highest NAV of a fund to date is known as the "high water mark". If the NAV of a fund declines during a year, no performance fee will be payable to the investment manager. If the NAV subsequently increases over the following year back to the high water mark (but no higher), it would be objectionable for the investor to be charged a performance fee on that increase because the investor has not yet made any return on its investment. Therefore, to address this concern, hedge funds will typically only charge a performance fee on increases in NAV over the high water mark.
Read more about this topic: Performance Fee
Famous quotes containing the words high, water and/or marks:
“And she’d had lucky eyes and a high heart,
And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax,
At need, and made her beautiful and fierce,
Sudden and laughing.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“If you keep your feathers well oiled the water of criticism will run off as from a duck’s back.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)