When people say hedge fund investors have their ups and downs, they’re not kidding. In the latest Tara Capital Hedge Fund Barometer, some strategies are flying again while other are dying. The biggest star in the bunch is convertible arbitrage, left for nearly dead a year ago when virtually no one (4%) thought of upping their allocations, but now in the third quarter of this year, 53% of those polled indicating they will put more in this strategy. “This is a great turnaround, and quite the best result that this strategy has recorded since the inception of the HFSB three years ago, said Managing Director Cyril Delamare in a statement.” On the down side, hedge funds investors have lost interest in global macro funds, with only 20% saying they will add to this strategy, a stunning drop from the 56% just three months ago. “This reflects a poor overall relative performance over the last year form the macro managers as a peer group,” Delamare noted. Long/short equity continues to slide with only 20% of those surveyed listing it as their preferred strategy, down from 41% in second quarter and 56% in the last quarter of 2005. While many of the other strategies remained consistent, some of the substrategies experienced major mood swings: Only 20% preferred multi-strategy event driven, down from 44% at the end of 2Q; and while global and U.S. long/short equity are losing favor, long/short in Japan and Europe saw healthy gains, with the former rising 12 percentage points to 40% and the European version soaring 22 percentage points to 33%.