Alternative Investments

By Keith Huang, Investing Across Borders
For Scudder Weisel Capital

Hedge funds trounced virtually all other investment classes last year, returning 7.6 percent in what was otherwise a bear market for equities. And if history repeats itself, the out-performance of hedge funds may not be finished, especially if the U.S. is heading for – if it’s not already in – a recession.

When the nation last entered a recession a decade ago, hedge funds defied a bear market. They gained 14.76 percent on average in 1990, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 3.14 percent, according to the Hennessee Hedge Fund Index, which tracks some 3,000 funds and equally weights an average of 22 investment styles.

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By Eric Uhlfelder, Investing Across Borders

The rapid and pervasive descent of the stock market has left investors scratching their heads, wondering where in the world they can turn. For those whose feet aren’t caught in the quicksand of Wall Street, an alternative investment is commodity trading funds.

By their very nature, commodity funds excel during bouts of volatility, precisely the conditions we’re experiencing now. Using futures contracts to make leveraged bets on various pieces of the global economy -- currencies, energy, bonds and interest rates, stock indices and agricultural and consumer goods -- commodity trading advisers [CTAs] are able to profit from price swings regardless of which direction they are heading.

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FX funds, done right, can be haven in volatile times

By Eric Uhlfelder, Investing Across Borders

In the 1990s, when George Soros made a billion dollars trading the pound sterling and was accused of killing Southeast Asia by successfully shorting the region’s currencies, most individual investors figured this is the kind of capitalist warfare practiced only in the rarified air of the high net worth.

Not so. There are a host of foreign exchange funds that will let you do battle with as little as $5,000. Still, many individual investors may find this of little interest because they know next to nothing about currency trading, and in their minds the image of currency traders is something more akin to Ghengis Khan in pinstripes rather than a Peter Lynchian approach to sound, long-term investing.

Full story at www.fx-one.com

An introduction to private equity funds

By Jim Cole, Investing Across Borders

for ScudderWeisel.com

Federal Express, Henry Ford’s assembly lines, Minute Maid’s invention of orange juice concentrate, the Safeway supermarket chain -- they all grew with the help of private equity investments.

In each case investors saw value in the business or the business concept and risked their own money to finance growth -- and reaped solid, long-term profits on their investments.

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