Japanese Hedge funds shunning trading models

when half of the global trade is done on trading models Japanese hedge funds are keeping away from the trading models and are more focussed on the internal research, and ofcourse performing well LINK

April 7 (Bloomberg) -- Hideki Wakabayashi sat through 500 meetings with company executives before settling on the stocks that produced a 13 percent advance last year for the long-short equity hedge fund he runs at Tokyo-based Finnowave Investments.

Toru Hashizume matched Wakabayashi’s performance with a 13 percent return for his Ginga Service Sector Fund by following a similar path. He said he sifted through 800 stocks before betting on about 70.

The Japanese hedge fund managers plan to beat benchmarks again in 2009 by shunning computer-driven trading in favor of company research. Their gains contrast with the average 19 percent drop of global hedge funds, according to data compiled by Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc., and the 42 percent slump in the Nikkei 225 Stock Average during 2008, the index’s worst annual performance.