Barron's list of the best 50 hedge funds

This week's Barron's cover story is their list of what they believe to be the top 50 best hedge funds.  Although that may not be entirely true, since they couldn't get their hands on the numbers for some of those you'd expect to be among the top:

Who's on our list? At the top: RAB Special Situations (up an average of 47.69% a year for three years), The Children's Investment Fund (44.27%), Highland CDO Opportunity (44.12%), BTR Global Opportunity (43.42%) and SR Phoenica (43.10).

We were surprised that some well-known funds didn't make the grade, though they came close. Citadel Investment Group's $4 billion Citadel Wellington fund missed by a hair, returning 20.25% on a compound annual basis for the 36 months ending in June, according to our sources. Pequot Capital, Greenlight Capital and GLG Partners also had funds with returns topping 18% in that time, sources say. Lone Pine Capital and Cerberus Capital weren't far behind, with gains of at least 16% for funds that easily met our asset minimum, sources said.

A couple of the industry's top funds -- quant-trading powerhouse Renaissance Technologies' Renaissance Medallion Fund and ESL Investments' flagship ESL Partners -- each would have likely merited a spot. Both boasted returns of at least 35% annually for the three years through 2006. But we weren't able to obtain dependable year-to-date figures for either of them.

Two other pace-setters -- SAC Capital and Appaloosa Management -- offer funds that sources said would make our list, but we simply weren't able to obtain reliable figures.

Here's the full list from Barron's.  Click to enlarge the picture;  you may have to click twice.