The Bush administration and top financial regulators have pledged increased vigilance over hedge funds but stopped short of proposing new regulations for the trillion-dollar industry, the Associated Press reported.

Instead, the President’s Working Group, which was formed after the stock market crash of 1987 and is composed of the U.S. treasury secretary and the heads of the Federal Reserve Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, put forward a set of guidelines they said would enhance knowledge about the largely secretive investment pools.

“These guidelines should serve as a foundation to enhance vigilance and market discipline further, which will strengthen investor protection and guard against systemic risk,” Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said in a statement.

U.S. hedge funds, numbering more than 9,000 with assets estimated to exceed $1 trillion, have traditionally catered to the rich, as well as pension funds and university endowments, but are increasingly luring less wealthy investors.

The funds operate with minimal government supervision. Since 2001, the SEC has brought more than 60 cases charging hedge fund managers with defrauding investors of more than $1 billion.