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Bloomberg – Paul Touradji had a good year in 2008, a 12-month span that most other traders would like to forget. His flagship hedge fund, Touradji Global Resources Fund LP, returned 8.6 percent trading oil, copper and aluminum.
The average hedge fund lost 19 percent, and some expert managers, such as Chicago-based Citadel Investment Group LLC, saw their funds drop more than 50 percent. Touradji’s biggest competitor, Ospraie Management LLC, closed its largest fund.
Bloomberg – Hedge funds returned an average 5.2 percent in May, the best performance in more than nine years, as they attracted more money and global markets rallied, Eurekahedge Pte said.
The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index, tracking more than 2,000 funds, has advanced 9.2 percent this year, according to a preliminary report by the research firm based on the 27 percent of funds that reported May performance. The industry recorded net inflows for the first time in 10 months in May, gaining $1.5 billion, while total assets rose by $5 billion, the report said.
“Numbers of this magnitude clearly won’t last, but I do think the industry will have a very good year,” said Peter Douglas, principal of GFIA Pte, a Singapore-based hedge-fund consulting firm. “What we like at the moment is equity long- shorts, and Asia is an equity story.” Long-short equity funds bet on rising and falling stock prices.
Seattle Times – The big stories in the mutual-fund world are always taking shape, but the new year gives us a chance to gaze into the crystal ball to try to read future headlines.
Performance stories always rule the day — and I don’t make market forecasts, leaving that task to people willing to volunteer for the job of village idiot — so maybe it will be a good year if the economic crisis winds up serving as the backdrop for the developing stories, rather than continuing to dominate the news itself.
Here are the fund-world stories that could capture the headlines in the year ahead:
