Yes all long short funds have high fees so they need to be good! ALF not quite meeting that requirement ATM. And yes AEG fund structure is bad for the investor as well.
It's not about from inception for The water mark it is rolling over the periods that they collect fees. So hypothetically if over a 12 month period to June 30th 2019 ALF underperformed their bench mark by say 10% the should have to make that up before charging fees in 2020. But they don't if they outperform by 10% in 2020 they get their full fees whilst investors take the full hit for the loss in 2019.
You could imagine how this could compound and eat away at investor returns over a long term horizon.