Abstract
The growth of the hedge fund industry and the proliferation of retail alternative funds in combination with the fundamental reshaping of the regulatory landscape for the hedge fund industry suggest that mutual funds are becoming more like hedge funds as a matter of investment strategy while hedge funds are becoming more like mutual funds as a matter of the regulatory framework. The chapter conceptualizes confluence as an emerging process and shows that confluence of mutual and hedge funds has implications for the evolution of the hedge fund industry, the governance of the mutual fund industry, the growth of the retail alternative fund market, and the structure of federal securities regulation