Globe and Mail – Hedge fund manager Eric Sprott heaps praise on his "defensive team" for helping him survive this bear market.

While some of his peers have cratered amid this year’s stock market crash, his short positions have kept him well ahead of his benchmark index.

For the first 11 months of this year, the returns of Sprott Bull/Bear RSP and Sprott Hedge LP I and II range from an 8.5-per-cent gain to a 4.5-per-cent loss compared with the S&P/TSX composite’s sharp 33-per-cent slide.

"The reason we started our first Canadian hedge fund in 2000 was because we foresaw this very, very difficult market," recalls Mr. Sprott, also chief executive officer of Toronto-based Sprott Inc.

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Globe and Mail – Math whiz Ravi Sood has ridden the highs and lows of the wild world of hedge funds.

The president of Lawrence Asset Management Inc. made a name for himself running the firm’s flagship hedge fund with stellar returns such as his 75-per-cent gain in 2007.

But the stock market crash has dealt a blow to Lawrence Partners Fund, which suspended redemptions this week after plunging 65 per cent for the first 10 months of this year.

The investment firm “believes it is in the best interests of all shareholders to suspend redemptions for 60 days,” the 32-year-old manager told investors in letter on Monday.

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Houston Chronicle – Billionaire investor George Soros told a Senate panel Tuesday that the run-up in oil prices has "some of the earmarks" of a bubble and that institutional investors stampeding into commodities are helping raise prices.

Appearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee, the famous hedge fund manager and supporter of liberal causes described the pension funds, university endowments and other large institutional investors pouring billions of dollars into commodity index funds as reminiscent of a craze to add insurance to portfolios that he said led to the stock market crash of 1987.

"In both cases," Soros said, "the institutions are piling in on one side of the market, and they have sufficient weight to unbalance it.

"If the trend were reversed and the institutions as a group headed for the exit as they did in 1987, there would be a crash."

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