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This paper presents new stylized facts about hedge fund performance and data biases based on a novel database aggregation. Our aim is to improve the ability of researchers in this literature to compare results across different studies by highlighting differences between databases and their effect on previously documented results. Using a comprehensive hedge fund database, we document economically important positive risk-adjusted performance of the average fund while differences in magnitude are due to differences in fund size and data biases, but not differences in fund risk exposures. However, this performance does not persist in any of databases when using value-weighted returns; a finding which we show to be linked to fund size and more pronounced biases in certain databases. Hedge funds with greater managerial incentives, smaller funds and younger funds outperform while hedge funds with strict …