Hunter Having A Nice Return, Literally And Figuratively

Former hedge-fund trader Brian Hunter, now advising and working with Paul Touradji and Renee Haugerud, made 24 percent in July, and are up 230 percent this year in their Peak Ridge Commodity Volatility Fund (see Bloomberg article). As you may recall, Hunter is the former Amaranth Advisors energy trader who helped lose $6.6 billion in 2006 from disastrous natural gas trades. As for evaluating the fund's performance, Aoifinn Devitt, founder of Clontarf Capital said it best: "They timed their trades well when everybody else missed the beginning of the correction, and this correction is increasingly looking like it's got legs.'' Definitely correct on the first point, and probably right on the second. Whether the correction is long lasting or not is yet to be seen. You also have to love the opportunistic nature of the fund itself: commodity volatility. Timing truly is everything. A little foresight does not hurt either.