From what I know they are termed long only hedge funds, there is another category which just shorts stocks a fund run by Dana Galante generated a 15% Cagr from 1995 to 2000(The mother of the biggest bull market in US ever) at the height of the techbubble by ONLY shorting stocks (if anyone can start a new topic on her with some links then it would be interesting).

Generally short sellers are termed unpatriotic because they are betting on failure rather then success, hence Govts. normally do not like hedge funds because they sell when markets fall and buy when they go up.The long only funds also liquidate when the value of its holding hits a certain threshhold and that does not make it popular because they aggravate the trend - both ways. Some say it is hot money some can call it warm money but money has no color nor temperature.

But it is these short sellers that bring wonderful prices to the long term investor so without the short seller one could never have bought companies at 30pc RoE with 5pc yield at PE of 5 times.

Edited by basant - 30/Aug/2009 at 12:11pm

Excellent information given. The way he looks at things is very different and almost ruthless.
One of the most important things for me is "Basically what we like are companies that can compound their earnings for a long time with infrequent dilutions."

This I have learnt after lot of pain and is probably very important factor for me - alternatively look at ROE/ROCE

Which indian listed company falls under this category?

it is a gud one