1. introduction 2. quantification of equity market risk: riskometer 2.1. introduction 2.2. data 2.3. methods 2.4. risk measures 2.5. backtesting 3. empirical characteristics of hedge fund strategies 3.1. introduction 3.2. data 3.3. risk – return characteristics 3.4. dependence structure analysis 3.5. generalized style analysis 3.6. time – varying exposures analysis 4. concluding remarks 5. references 6. glossary 7. fitting copulas 8. digital filtering