Bloomberg – Everywhere you look these days, people are scrambling for energy supplies.
China is scouring the world, from the oil sands of Alberta to the oilfields of Iran. Morgan Stanley and other investment banks have spent hundreds of millions of dollars for petroleum still in the ground. And more than 450 hedge funds (and counting) are busy in the energy market, trading in everything from coal to solar-power companies.
Peter C. Fusaro and Gary M. Vasey rattle off these trends and put them in context in their useful handbook, “Energy and Environmental Hedge Funds: The New Investment Paradigm.”
If you’re looking for a beach book, this isn’t it. The authors write in a prose style reminiscent of a brokerage report and talk about market conditions such as “backwardation” and “contango.” They abbreviate greenhouse gases as GHG.
So what? This is spinach, not dessert, and it’s loaded with vitamins. Who needs sugar, unless to trade it as “an energy- related commodity”? The authors explain all this and more in their snapshot of a market in motion.
Fusaro and Vasey are co-founders of Energy Hedge Fund Center LLC, an online researcher and consulting firm. According to their Web site, the authors have between them more than 50 years’ experience in energy, which they call “the world’s largest business with over $4 trillion in annual trade.” This expertise doesn’t come cheap: Their book is priced at $120.
