NEW YORK (AP) — Hedge funds were once the rock stars of the financial industry. The smartest people worked for them. The wealthiest gave them their money. They were an easy path to fortune.

But if that get-rich-quick narrative was an exaggeration before the financial crisis, it's even less true since. The hedge fund industry's performance has been spotty in recent years; its public image, bruised. SAC Capital Advisors became the latest high-flyer brought low when the Justice Department on Thursday accused it of allowing insider trading and making hundreds of millions of dollars illegally.

To critics, hedge funds are secretive, risky, loosely regulated playgrounds for the super wealthy. And while the industry keeps expanding, its performance does not. This year could be the fifth in a row that hedge funds underperform the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index, according to Hedge Fund Research, or HFR, which analyzes the industry. That's an unwelcome reversal: For the 19 years from 1990 to 2008, hedge fund returns beat or tied the S&P 500 15 times.