By Gregory Meyer
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- The flagship hedge fund run by John H. Burbank III's Passport Capital rose by almost a quarter in May as bets in commodities and emerging markets paid off.
The firm's $1.5 billion Global Strategy fund was up 24.3% last month and 32.9% for the year through May, according to a report to investors. Last year the fund lost more than half its value as markets crashed.
Burbank has wagered big on certain commodities and emerging markets as the U.S. remains mired in recession and central banks' efforts to stimulate the economy threaten to undermine paper currencies.
The fund's top 10 long holdings as of May 31 included Riversdale Mining Ltd. (RIV.AU), based in Australia; the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) exchange-traded fund, which tracks gold prices; Jordan Phosphate Mines Co. (JOPH.AJ), of Jordan; Financial Technologies Ltd. (526881.BY), of India; and Mosaic Co. (MOS), a fertilizer company.
The Passport Global strategy is "long-biased," or weighted toward price gains, and attempts to take advantage of "inefficiencies in the world's most promising capital markets," a description on the San Francisco-based firm's Web site said.
A spokeswoman for the firm declined to comment on performance.
Passport has been looking recently for ways to own gold, not futures or stock in gold producers, but bars of the metal itself. The fund manager is finalizing arrangements to buy and store bullion, Passport sales and marketing managing director Bill Nolan said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires last month.
"In an inflationary environment, which we think is very likely given our outlook for the dollar and for long-term rates in the U.S., we think you want to own hard assets," Nolan said. "But you have to be judicious about which hard assets you own."
-By Gregory Meyer, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-4377; greg.meyer@dowjones.com