Do you find hedging effective?

Do you believe in hedging your equity portfolio with options/futures or do you find it to be a drag on performance from a compounded growth perspective?

Example: shareholders of SPY could hedge shares with a put option expiring in 2 years that would cost roughly 8% of your total portfolio but would limit total losses to only 8% over a 2 year period. There's obviously a 4%/year annual drag on returns but do you feel that it is a positive EV hedge over the long term?