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Strategies & Market Trends : The coming US dollar crisis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Real Man who wrote (9037)	6/17/2008 8:56:25 AM
From: Giordano Bruno	Respond to of 71409

Maybe they'll take out full page ads in celebration akin to the FDIC's action yesterday. fdic.gov

To: Real Man who wrote (9037)	6/17/2008 9:05:32 AM
From: Giordano Bruno	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71409

Hedge fund trivia Lambs To The Slaughter? In 2005, hedge funds were in their absolute heyday, with record launches and cash galore. Less than three years later, however, the landscape has changed completely. Smaller and fallen hedge funds are being forced out, while the pituitary-gland cases that are Man Group, Och-Ziff Capital Management and D.E. Shaw increasingly flex their mighty muscles – even over the monster banks. Meanwhile, many traders with excellent track records are getting lost in the shuffle. Looking at the awesome rise of the hedge fund and the makings of what appear to be some very rocky times ahead. Morning Call: June 17 The hedge-fund business -- among the most reliable fortune-producing machines in recent years -- is going through a brutal shakeout. Just a few years ago, traders found it relatively easy to quit Wall Street jobs, hang out a hedge-fund shingle and cash in. Investors beat down the doors with eagerness reminiscent of the late-1990s dot-com frenzy. It took only a decade for the industry to grow to 8,000 funds from a few hundred. But now smaller hedge funds, including top performers, are shuttering, and even brand-name traders are finding it tougher to get new ones off the ground. Only 1,152 new funds were launched in 2007, down almost 50% from a 2005 peak, according to Hedge Fund Research Inc. Because so many funds closed last year or merged into others, the business expanded by just 589 funds overall, the smallest increase in six years. The next test: The possibility of a wave of withdrawals at the end of this month, the next quarterly date on which many investors are permitted to pull out their money. The inflow of new money from investors has already been slowing during the past two quarters. At the same time, hedge-fund returns have been flat, adding to the pressure. Managers of hedge funds -- private partnerships that cater to wealthy individuals and institutions and are less regulated than, say, mutual funds -- like to think of themselves as a unique breed, capable of racking up big profits from opportunities that ordinary investors overlook. But in fact their profession is tracing the path of other businesses, whether autos or computers, that enjoyed rapid growth, led by aggressive entrepreneurs, before confronting deep challenges. And just as, say, eBay Inc. and Yahoo Inc. left rivals in the dust, or Vanguard Group and Fidelity Investments came to dominate the mutual-fund world, the largest hedge funds, such as Och-Ziff Capital Management, D.E. Shaw & Co. and Paulson & Co. are pulling away from the pack. By the end of last year, 87% of all the money in the business was handled by funds managing $1 billion or more, and 60% was held by managers sitting on $5 billion or more. The dominance by the largest funds has been accelerating: In the past two months alone, the world's largest public hedge-fund company, Man Group PLC, increased assets by $4 billion, to $78.5 billion.