Recently, he shifted some of the organization's gold bullion into an equivalent bet on gold using futures, a move that freed up cash that was plowed into stocks.

WSJ: Gold's Fall Stings Texas Universities' Endowment

Dean Curnutt at Macro Risk Advisors figures that in early March the Credit Suisse fund had to trade the equivalent of 3, 300 VIX futures contracts daily, or about 4% of the entire day's volume.

WSJ: Chaos Over a Plunging Note

The other dinosaur den is financial options--the equivalent of the right, for example, to buy Treasury bond futures at a certain strike price--where traders hang over the railings, screaming and waving frantically.

FORBES: Companies, People, Ideas

According to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the American regulator for commodity futuresmarkets, the increase in short positions over September was equivalent to 470, 000 barrels of oil.

ECONOMIST: OPEC��s oil shock | The