BOSTON (Reuters) — New numbers show what has long been rumored: Hedge funds can be a pot of gold for the people who run them and make portfolio selections for them.The chief executive at an average hedge fund that manages at least $500 million in assets took home $4.5 million while its portfolio manager was paid $2.5 million, publishing and research group Infovest21 found in its latest survey released yesterday.

At funds that manage $5 billion or more, the total compensation was even higher, with the CEO walking away with $5.9 million while the portfolio manager took home $3.0 million, the group’s latest data for 2006 show.

Even at smaller hedge funds managing less than $500 million, the top executive earned $1.7 million while the portfolio manager was paid $386,000.

This is Infovest21’s fifth annual survey.

While these sums are nowhere near the $1.5 billion that Alpha magazine said mathematician-turned-hedge fund manager James Simons of Renaissance Technologies Corp. took home in 2005, they are significantly richer than the median American household income of $46,300, according to the Census Bureau.

Hedge funds are loosely regulated investment pools that differentiate themselves from mutual funds by charging both a performance fee and a management fee, something that lets its top executives earn generally higher salaries than those paid in the $9.5 trillion mutual fund industry.