| In April, two of the greatest gunfighters in hedge fund history said they were throwing in the towel. George Soros announced he had decided to turn his mighty Quantum Fund, after 30 years of spectacular growth, into an endowment fund for his charity work. His star dealer, Stanley Druckenmiller, admitted that the game was over: "We just overstayed our welcome," he was quoted as saying, "we thought it was the eighth inning, but it was the ninth." He has quit Soros to run his own fund. Julian Robertson, whose $20 billion Tiger Fund along with Quantum once scared presidents and central bankers around the world, is unwinding it, having veered off course into the shares of US takeover targets. Although these are only two in an industry of over 5,000 hedge funds, they mark the end of an era. The global macro fund manager still exists. Louis Bacon still runs the $9 billion Moore Capital, and Paul Tudor Jones still puts his billions into currency positions, although both have given capital back to their investors. But few expect to see again those great directional plays of the 1990s when the war-cry "Hedge Fund Attack" encouraged armies of speculators to join in and punish governments that thought they could implement non-market policies. |