By Katrina Dean Allen Despite the big performance gains of 2009 and the loose talk about money finally flowing back into hedge funds, the industry still has a long way to climb to get back to its peak. The Billion Dollar Club—AR's biannual survey of American hedge funds managing $1 billion or more—shows that the 213 hedge fund firms running $1 billion or more in assets managed a combined total of $1.182 trillion as of January. That's just a fraction above what they managed at the beginning of 2009, when 218 firms held a combined total of $1.134 trillion. By the middle of 2009, however, many firms had begun to fully absorb the aftershocks of the market losses and scandals of late 2008. Only 205 firms managed $1 billion or more, and assets in The Club fell to $1.084 trillion. At the Club's high point in July 2008, the biggest...