1.5.2008 - Investment in Commodity Indexes Soars to $250 Billion
Money in funds tracking the two most popular commodity indexes jumped 48 percent so far this year, showing investors have may have influenced record energy, food and metals prices, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Investments following the Standard & Poor's GSCI index and Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index have risen to $250 billion from $169 billion at the start of the year, Ben Dell, an analyst at New York-based Bernstein, wrote in a report published yesterday.

1.5.2008 - Nymex makes record profits
The New York Mercantile Exchange, the commodities market which is set to merge with CME Group, reported a record profit in the first quarter due to all-time high volumes and an increase in electronic trading. Net profit for the first quarter ended March 31 rose 27% from the same period last year to $71.2m (€46m). Average daily volume was a record 1.9 million contracts, a 24% increase over the first quarter of 2007.

1.5.2008 - Property derivatives trading hits new record
Trading in Britain's fledgling property derivatives sector hit a record 3.67 billion pounds in the first quarter of 2008, more than double the volume traded in the last three months of 2007, data showed on Thursday.

2.5.2008 - Hedge funds fastest growing AIC sector
Hedge funds have become one of the fastest growing AIC sectors in recent years, according to the association. Accounting for 23% of all investment company sector new issues last year, the fourth largest sector now has more than L6.6bn in assets.

3.5.2008 - Derivatives Hurt Profit at Berkshire Hathaway
Berkshire Hathaway, Warren E. Buffett’s investment company, said on Friday that first-quarter profit tumbled 64 percent, hurt by $1.6 billion of pretax losses tied to derivatives contracts.

5.5.2008 - Esse Plans to Raise $750 Million for Fund After Leaving Sempra
Todd Esse, a co-founder of Sempra Energy Trading, plans to raise as much as $750 million for a natural-gas hedge fund because of rising prices and investor interest in energy, a person familiar with the situation said.

5.5.2008 - Commodity Investments at $225 Billion, Barclays Says
Commodity assets under management expanded by a record in the first quarter to $225 billion as prices for energy, metals and agriculture increased to all-time highs, Barclays Capital said.

6.5.2008 - Investec launches natural resource and commodity vehicle
Investec has launched an Enhanced Natural Resources fund, a commodity and resource equity vehicle.

6.5.2008 - Barclays Wealth seeks to boost commodity exposure
Barclays Wealth is hoping to correct the retail investor’s “materially underweight” exposure to commodities with a new protected investment suite. Commodity Select, available to 20 June, is a five-year investment linked to a diverse basket of commodities – including energy, agriculture, base and precious metals.

7.5.2008 - Lehman upgrade lifts MF Global shares
Shares of MF Global Ltd. were up nearly 5% in afternoon trading Wednesday after Lehman Brothers upgraded its rating on the stock to overweight from equal weight, after a 48% decline since the company's disclosure of a $141.5 million bad debt related to an employee's personal trading losses.

7.5.2008 - Conning Tapped To Manage Carbon Fund
Conning Asset Management, a unit of Swiss Re, has been tapped to manage a new €125 million ($194 million) fund that will buy and trade carbon credits.

8.5.2008 - FUND VIEW-HSBC Absolute Return dumps commodities
One of HSBC's most actively managed fund divisions has been reducing its exposure to commodities, expecting a major correction in the high-flying sector.

8.5.2008 - DDQ offers latest tranche of commodity products
Dawnay Day quantum is offering further tranches of its commodity-based structured products, after taking almost double the capacity on the last issue.

9.5.2008 - Swiss Currency Shop To Offer L/S FX Fund
Pfäffikon, Switzerland-based currency specialist Quaesta Capital this month is unveiling a foreign exchange volatility fund, V-Pro. The long/short fund will start trading at the end of the month with “substantial” seed capital from a “well-known” Swiss-based family office.

9.5.2008 - Amaranth Founder Maounis to Start New Multistrategy Hedge Fund
Nicholas Maounis, the hedge-fund manager whose Amaranth Advisors LLC collapsed under a record $6.6 billion loss in 2006, is seeking to start a new firm, according to a note sent today to his former investors.

12.5.2008 - U.K. Firm Offers Commodity, Power Hedge Funds
U.K.-based Ebullio Capital Management has launched a commodity hedge fund, and plans to launch a power and emissions vehicle sometime in the third quarter.

13.5.2008 - China growth to keep commodity boom alive
Long-term growth prospects in China should continue to fuel the country's insatiable demand for raw materials like copper and keep a commodity boom in place for years to come, a hedge fund executive said.

13.5.2008 - The looming commodity crisis
There is a crisis looming in the world's commodity markets, but it is has nothing to do with high prices, food shortages or the "peak oil hypothesis." It has everything to do with the flood of capital into new financial instruments tied to commodity prices.

14.5.2008 - Forex Hedge Fund Founders ‘Shoot’ For Better Times On Their Own
A team of veterans of trouble hedge fund Shooter Fund Management are striking out on their own. The foursome has founded Dacharan Capital, which hopes to raise up to US$200 million for a currency hedge fund, Bloomberg News reports. The firm is led by former Shooter marketing chief David Beddington and ex-traders Antti Aitio, Ari Andricopoulos and Charles Phan.

14.5.2008 - Eclectica primes Agriculture Futures offering
Eclectica is set to launch an agriculture futures fund to further capitalise on the commodities bull market. The Eclectica Agriculture Futures fund, launching in June, will be long-only and will be co-managed by Hugh Hendry and Espen Baardsen.

14.5.2008 - MFs to cash in on commodities
With equity markets turning bearish and the commodity cycle at its peak, mutual funds are now shifting their focus to commodities. Fund houses plan to enter this segment through commodity-oriented stocks and mutual funds abroad.

15.5.2008 - Liffe offers new money market options
Liffe, the international derivatives exchange, is launching new money market products amid growing concerns over the London Interbank Offered Rate – the benchmark for global borrowing costs – as a reference for future interest rates.

18.5.2008 - Eurex to launch futures and options on MSCI Russia Index next month
The international derivatives exchange Eurex is to launch derivatives based on the MSCI Russia Index denominated in US dollars on June 23, extending an existing range of products based on Russian equity markets introduced in April 2007, and will add another equity option on OJSC Rosneft on the same date.

19.5.2008 - Ex-Amaranth Trader Hunter Helps Deliver 17% Gain for Peak Ridge
A commodities hedge fund advised by Brian Hunter returned 17 percent last month using a strategy similar to one the energy trader relied on at Amaranth Advisors LLC and that led to its collapse in 2006.

19.5.2008 - Financial speculators on congressional hot seat
Pension funds and other institutional investors are driving commodity prices to the moon by allocating massive amounts of money to energy and agricultural investments and sidestepping regulatory limits on big speculative bets, according to research expected to be presented to Congress on Tuesday.

20.5.2008 - Energy Hedge Funds Sputter Despite Soaring Markets
Oil and natural gas prices have soared to new highs this year, but most energy hedge funds are having trouble turning a profit in their trades. Energy hedge fund managers interviewed by Hedge Fund Trades cited various reasons for their weak performance this year. Some have been on the wrong side of oil prices swings, while others have suffered from positions in oil companies and refiners that produced lackluster returns.

20.5.2008 - Barclays Launches Global Agriculture Delta Fund
U.K.-based Barclays Capital has launched the Global Agriculture Delta Fund to give Singapore- and Hong Kong-based investors transparent exposure to the agricultural market via the Rogers International Commodity Index.

20.5.2008 - J.C. Flowers Takes Stake In MF Global
If you can’t beat’em, join’em, even if they are posting millions in losses and facing a mountain of debt. That’s buyout shop J.C. Flowers & Co.’s apparent strategy: It has agreed to buy as much as US$300 million in futures broker MF Global equity. MF Global, the former Man Group unit, will use the proceeds to pay down and restructure its debt.

20.5.2008 - Fitch to take MF Global off review after final capital plan
Fitch Ratings on Tuesday maintained its Rating Watch Negative on MF Global's short- and long-term issuer default ratings of F2 and BBB+ but said the company will be taken off of review once its final capital plan is in place.

21.5.2008 - U.S. Congress could ban speculators from commodities
The chairman of a Senate oversight committee has said he is considering legislation to place limits on large institutional investors in commodities markets, which have posted record prices this year in agricultural products and oil. The legislation would be aimed at speculators and other investors who use commodities as a way to hedge against swings in other investment instruments like stocks and the dollar.

21.5.2008 - Shariah-compliant commodity trading gathers pace in Dubai
Islamic Finance is not only dedicated to Islamic bonds (sukuk) or to funds investing in the stocks of firms which operate in a Shariah-compliant way. It also has a prominent role to play in commodity trading. With the current boom in the commodity sector and in Islamic finance, financial institutions find themselves in a win-win-situation.

22.5.2008 - Mulvaney Drops 8.5% In April
Mulvaney Capital Management continued its slide in April, dropping a further 8.58% to bring its year-to-date return to 31.9%.

22.5.2008 - Federal Court Orders Texas Commodity Pool To Hold
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has frozen the assets of George Hudgins, purveyor of commodity pool 3737 Financial.

22.5.2008 - Commodities traders shift attention to the long term
The change has been signaled by record-high oil prices for contracts stretching out to 2016.

23.5.2008 - Newbie Investors Fueling Commodities Boom
New research from Greenwich Associates reveals that more than a third of investors in commodities have been active in these markets for less than three years, and more than one in 10 say they started investing in over-the-counter commodity derivatives within the past 12 months. According to the research, the growing ranks of commodity market investors consist of three types of insitutions: pension funds, which use commodities as a portfolio diversification tool; European banks, which use commodity derivatives to structure retail products that they then sell to their retail customers; and hedge funds, which use commodities as a source of alpha.

25.5.2008 - Market Maker: Energy Speculators Draw the Heat
Members of Congress have joined the antispeculation bandwagon, blaming speculators for high oil prices, and have proposed legislation to curb energy trading.

25.5.2008 - Managed futures corrects its previous gains in April
After a very good first quarter managed futures strategy corrects its year to date result by 2.2% to 8.1%. Despite this monthly loss, it remains by far the best hedge fund strategy. Global markets rebounded in April, as investors started to believe that the worst from financial crisis could already over. Volatility is decreasing; however, market uncertainty does persist, mainly due to the inflation pressure. But hedge fund managers are starting to take advantage of market opportunities arising from the first quarter.

26.5.2008 - Carry trade in yen finds fuel in Japan
The yen carry trade has not only survived the past nine months of financial market turmoil but also appears likely to continue for many years thanks to the most devoted users of this decade-old investment strategy: Japanese investors.

28.5.2008 - S&P launches commodity and natural resources indices
Standard & Poor's (S&P) has launched two new indices aimed at providing investors ...

29.5.2008 - Meteor prepares commodity tracking structured product
Meteor has launched a structured product to be based on a basket of commodities including copper, wheat ...

29.5.2008 - Carry trade silence
Last year's big theme was the carry trade, where investors favour high yielding currencies at the expense of those offering low rates of interest. But, of late, carry trade chatter seems ...

29.5.2008 - Man Group shares rally after AHL unit drives profit growth
Shares in Man Group, the world's biggest hedge fund manager, climbed more than 5% Thursday after it reported a 55% jump in profit from continuing operations, thanks to ...

30.5.2008 - Pension Funds Defend Commodity Investments
The pension industry is starting to mobilize to protect its ability to invest in commodities markets.