Patriot Ledger – For years, Brian Hlidek had a hard time finding a mutual fund for his clients that would help them reduce their investment risks the way a hedge fund would.

Finally, the Hingham resident decided the best solution would be to start his own fund.

Hlidek, a former investment adviser, and Jay Compson, a friend who worked for a hedge fund in Boston, came up with an idea while the two commuted to Boston together on the ferry: a mutual fund that would allow investors to benefit from a hedge fund-style of investing.

The pair traded in their boat ride for a short car trip to Station Street in downtown Hingham, where they launched their own mutual fund firm last year, called Absolute Investment Advisers. Hlidek and Compson, also a Hingham resident, lined up four other partners for the firm: Alec Petro of Duxbury and Chris Ward of Hingham – and Chris Aymond and Tony Bosch, who work in Denver.

The company’s mutual fund, the Absolute Strategies Fund, was launched last summer and has accumulated nearly $120 million of investors’ assets in less than a year.

‘‘We’re trying to bring strategies that are used by more sophisticated institutional investors down to the retail world,’’ Hlidek said.

The mutual fund is one of the few in the country that mirrors what’s known as a ‘‘hedge fund of funds’’ – a hedge fund that reduces risk by investing in many other hedge funds. Unlike most mutual funds, hedge funds can make bets on the stock price of a company going down. Such ‘‘short-selling,’’ as it’s known in the industry, allows hedge funds to make gains even when the overall stock market is struggling.

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