Investors in search of volatility funds to hedge their stock exposure in these wild market times are discovering those instruments have become a rare bird – one that not likely to take flight again soon. Beginning in 2003, when the current bull market started charging, volatility funds couldn’t bear the incredibly shrinking opportunities necessary for them to succeed and went belly up. Now, Reuters reports, investors are clamoring for the volatility but there is nary a talented HF manager who specializes in it. “There is not enough expertise in volatility trading,” says Drago Indjic of the hedge fund center at the London Business School. Investors may not want to hold their breath for them, says Indjic, as “more hedge funds are becoming multistrategy, and volatility will be just one of the things they trade.” So if it’s something to minimize risks, the multistrategies or funds of hedge funds may do the trick. And for those with a predilection for single-strategy funds, global macros and relative-value strategies can accomplish the same thing. As for the once-popular volatility funds, “Maybe more hedge funds will decide it’s a viable thing to do,” Bill Maldonado of HSBC Halbis Partners said in a Reuters interview, doubting there are investors will be clamoring for volatility funds by name. “I suspect what they’ll say is, ‘I want funds that can do well in this kind of environment.’”