This has been a bad year for hedge funds. Many are facing huge redemptions, while others, such as Ospraie’s flagship commodity fund last week, are simply shutting down. You might think this is all down to the credit crunch or market volatility wiping these funds out, but that’s not always the case. I want to take a look for a moment at the possible motives behind some of these closures. They might not be as simple as they first appear…

For gold and silver investors this has been one of those weeks when you just wanted to bury your head in the sand, weep, then re-emerge in six months time.

It hasn’t been a good week for gold bugs. Gold futures tumbled yesterday (Tuesday) to $21 an ounce as crude oil prices sank to their lowest levels for the last three weeks.

But Money Morning’s Dominic Frisby says he’d rather own physical gold than any other asset right now.

Historical trends show that August almost always marks the start of an annual rally for the yellow metal. And gold’s fundamentals mean it will reward investors that hang on. More from Dominic…

I had lunch with a leading hedge fund manager over the weekend. He didn’t want me to mention his name, but he was happy to admit – in fact he went on about it at great length - that he and many of his peers have a serious problem on their hands and there’s not a lot they can do about it.

For a few days last week it looked like the ‘junior miners’ had finally decoupled from the mainstream stockmarket trend. They actually rose as the Dow and S&P plunged. Sadly it didn’t last – before long they turned down once again. It seems we were being teased.