A Few Agile Hedge Funds Defying Credit Crisis

While the average equity mutual fund is down 48% and the average hedge fund is down 20% so far this year, one uncanny hedge fund manager, Bernard V. Drury of Drury Capital, has posted incredible year-to-date gains of 60%, The New York Times reports.

Drury, a former commodities trader, refuses to say how he achieved the nearly impossible except to say he uses proprietary computer models.

Drury acknowledges his fund is not the norm, saying, “There’s going to be, naturally, a lot of forms of disillusionment with hedge funds.”

Pierre Villaneuve, managingdirector of the $750 million hedge fund Mapleridge Capital agrees: “This year, anything north of 10% is spectacular.”

In fact, only one out of every 50 hedge funds is up 30% or more so far this year and only one in three is in the black at all, most of them broad-reaching macro funds. Some of the other winners this year include a fund run by John Paulson, up nearly 30%, and others run by R.G. Niederhoffer Capital Management, Conquest Capital Group, MKP Capital Management, Progressive Capital and John W. Henry & Co.

On the flip side, some 70% of hedge funds are in the red so far this year. The worst previous year for hedge funds was in 2002, when only 31% finished down.