The Poker Professor draws similarities between winning at poker and hedging investments.

Lederer: The highest compensated hedge fund managers, and I think number 1 was Paulson.  I think he might be the brother of Hank Paulson.  And he had made his money, I think it was like, some scary, 3 point something billion, which is his compensation last year from fees and bonus, and they have just sort of said in the article, well, he made a lot of money betting against credit.  I’m sure betting is the [IB] and various other, you know, collateral [lies], debt obligations, but I was thinking, you know, for him to make that kind of money, he was making huge bets against these things, and there were people, and maybe some of them were banks, but I’m sure that there were, you know, hedge funds that were on the other side of those trades, and so, you know, and you essentially had, you know, I’m sure for a good portion of these trades that he made that he won on, there was someone exactly on the other side of that trade, but, wait a second, the public’s paying 20 plus 2 fees to be a part of that bet.  I mean, that’s just a massive negative expectation game for the investor in the hedge funds, and, you know, particularly when you talk about sort of macro directional trading, you know, I certainly have my doubts about the value of paying 20 plus 2 to big hedge fund managers that are making his bets that way.