One wonders if you've ever been subjected to the due diligence you think so poorly of? Its pretty thorough and pretty painful, and most certainly would turn up that a new fund was made of retreads from previous failed funds. What do you think they do, play a round of golf with the fund manager and wire the money from the clubhouse afterward?
the answer to your 1st question is no. my belief is that hedge funds cannot outperform the market over intermediate and long periods of time.
According to Bloomberg, Fortress Investment Group LLC plans to close down its macro hedge fund run by Michael Novogratz, according to a person with knowledge of the firm. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-...gantuan-macro-hedge-fund-after-losing-17-2015
It looks like novogratz was an inflationista . . . expected fed hikes, long china and brazil, expected big increase in labor inflation in US. just another inflationista taken out by the unrelenting deflation. I looked at his results a few months ago (it's in the fortress 10k's if you go back through them) and he's did about 8% over 13 years, less than that if you include this year's -17% performance, less than that if weighted by assets, probably negative in that case.