fund management and alternatives

This week's Economist has an editorial regarding funds that says:

"A survey by Watson Wyatt, a consulting firm, found that the cost of running a pension scheme increased by around half between 2003 and 2008. That was because schemes allocated more of their portfolios to hedge funds and private-equity managers, which charge much higher fees. Chasing performance by paying higher fees might work for individual investors, but in aggregate it is doomed to fail. The return to the average investor is the market return minus costs; if costs rise, returns must fall."

I don't think this is quite right if hedge funds and private-equity managers are investing in under-represented parts of the market. In that case, although the statement "The return to the average investor is the market return minus costs" is true, it unfairly treats the "market" as being the entire market even where it is not.