Houston Chronicle – Boone Pickens, the billionaire founder of BP Capital LLC, said 15 percent of his hedge funds’ holders have asked for the option to withdraw their money after he lost more than $1 billion in energy trades this year.

Pickens, who manages funds linked to energy commodities and equities, said his equity fund has taken a "real hit" as oil company stocks and oil prices have plummeted.

"I feel like all my fingers are mashed in the door right now," Pickens, 80, said on CNBC today. "I’m trying to get someone to open the door for me."

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Pickens was having his worst performance in 10 years, with his funds losing about $1 billion.

"It’s more than that now," Pickens said.

Pickens said his funds require a 90-day notice to withdraw money, "so if we can recover in the fourth quarter," people might reconsider exiting.

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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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