How the 33-year-old trader blamed for the multibillion-dollar collapse of monster energy hedge fund Amaranth came roaring back in the latest quarter on the same kind of gas bet that proved his catastrophic undoing in 2006. (How does that not take unspeakable gall?) Find out why, this time, things turned out different.

A commodities hedge fund advised by Brian Hunter returned 17 percent last month using a strategy similar to one the energy trader relied on at Amaranth Advisors LLC and that led to its collapse in 2006.

The Peak Ridge Commodity Volatility Fund, which seeks to profit from price differences in the natural-gas market, has gained 138 percent since starting on Nov. 13, according to an investor letter obtained by Bloomberg. The HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index fell 2.4 percent during the same period, according to Hedge Fund Research Inc. in Chicago.

Peak Ridge Capital Group Inc., a private-equity firm in Boston, hired Hunter last year as a consultant after his bets on natural-gas price spreads triggered $6.6 billion of losses at Amaranth, the most by a hedge fund. In 2005, his trades generated $1 billion in gains for the Greenwich, Connecticut- based firm.

"To have lost that amount of money and get back into the market with a similar-type trade takes a lot of confidence, if not arrogance," said Kent Bayazitoglu, an analyst at energy- consulting firm Gelber & Associates in Houston.

Peak Ridge Chief Executive Officer Michael McNally declined to comment, as did Brian Maddox, a New York-based spokesman for Hunter.

The fund uses options contracts, which give users the right to buy or sell a security at a future date and at a preset price. It bet in November that natural-gas contracts for March 2008 would settle at a "small" discount to April because inventory was adequate to meet winter demand, according to the investor letter.

Continue reading on Bloomberg.com

Next article » Top Centaurus Trader Heads South

Previous article « Gravy Train: Astoundingly, Still Chugging