hedge fund

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A pooled investment fund, usually a private partnership, that seeks to maximize absolute returns using a broad range of strategies, including unconventional and illiquid investments.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (Finance) a mutual fund or partnership of investors who pool large sums of money to speculate in securities, increasing the risk of such activity by using borrowed money to leverage the investments, or by selling short.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun Any unregistered investment fund, often characterised by unconventional strategies (i.e., strategies other than investing long only in bonds, equities or money markets). All hedge funds are supposed to be hedged from risk; hence the name.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a flexible investment company for a small number of large investors (usually the minimum investment is $1 million); can use high-risk techniques (not allowed for mutual funds) such as short-selling and heavy leveraging
• noun a flexible investment company for a small number of large investors (usually the minimum investment is $1 million); can use high-risk techniques (not allowed for mutual funds) such as short-selling and heavy leveraging