How much money actually flowed out of hedge funds last year? It depends on whom you ask, and the wildly divergent answers are likely to confuse hedge fund manager and investors alike. Hedge Fund Research first reported a loss of $824 million, while Tremont Capital Management just the other day put it at $4.3 billion in outflows. "In an industry that has no central database, the accuracy of the data can be questionable," hedge fund analyst Justin Dew of Standard & Poor's told Reuters. Both HFR and Tremont track funds, except the former analyzes 6,700 of them, while the latter looks at less than half that number – and they are not necessarily the same funds. So, there may be a big difference in the two figures, but that may not be a big deal. Dew drops this little hint for nervous HF investors trying to assess the far-flung figures: "It is a problem when you try to base investment decisions on it, but when you are making only high-level judgments on more general trends, then these numbers can be OK."