Hedge funds protect the bears!

``Being a bear has been a lot of fun recently. One of the funds in my model hedge portfolio is up 30% on the year, and up 50% over the last 12 months. Needless to say, this manager is a bear on the U. S. market. For the years 2001 and 2002, this manager had a combined return of about 140%. If this manager had represented 20% of your portfolio, it would have added about 28% to your portfolio. If the other 80% of your portfolio was in the S&P 500, being down 33%, this would have hurt your portfolio by 26%. The math is rough, but as you can see, with a small allocation to an uncorrelated strategy, you would have sailed through the horrible bear market with not even a scratch to your bottom line.''