Over the past couple years, a variety of new hedge funds have hit the market to capitalize on the bull market in commodities. However, things have not been so good lately. After all, it was a bad bet on natural gas that sunk the $9 billion hedge fund, Amaranth Advisors.

Well, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal [a paid service], there may be some more carnage. That is, the high-flier fund, Red Kite, is apparently trying to delay investor redemptions.

The problem? The fund lost a whopping 20% in January. Basically, there a terrible bet on copper.

But, with an delay on redemptions, Red Kite can take time to unwind its positions and hopefully get better value. The issue is that investors realize there is "blood in the water" and will no doubt try to profit from the misery. Actually, this was the case with the Amaranth implosion, which turned out to be a nice payday for JP Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM).

Actually, I wrote about this in a recent piece for BloggingStocks.com.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Another hedge fund losing its luster originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 02 Feb 2007 16:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.