In a month of almost unmitigated gloom for hedge funds, Christian Siva-Jothy, the former Goldman Sachs star trader, produced his best returns ever.

Mr Siva-Jothy's $440m SemperMacro hedge fund rose 12.3 per cent in September thanks to prescient predictions of US interest rates, bets against sterling and a short position aiming to profit from falling stock markets, according to a letter to investors. It is up 3.5 per cent for the year so far, after a 17.4 per cent gain last year.

Semper's success comes as the freewheeling trading style of hedge funds in the 1990s is back in fashion as a way to profit from wild market swings. So-called global macro trading was epitomised by George Soros, the hedge fund manager who forced sterling out of the European exchange rate mechanism in 1992.

Mr Siva-Jothy has told investors he is now putting bets on a "quantitative easing" of US rates, with protection against a temporary rise in long-term rates.

"We have a bona-fide global credit crunch of unprecedented proportions and this will require very novel and very aggressive policy prescriptions from government before we are anywhere near the end game," he wrote.

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September's result represents a turnround for Mr Siva-Jothy, who split from co-founder Gavyn Davies, former BBC chairman, last summer following withdrawals by clients upset by losses from his bearish stance in 2006. Mr Davies and Mr Siva-Jothy co-founded Fulcrum Asset Management, which had hosted SemperMacro.

Hedge funds had their second-worst month on record in September, falling 5.4 per cent according to Hedge Fund Research's HFRI index. Macro funds fell slightly in the month but are one of only four strategies to make money this year - albeit with very large differences between the best and the worst.

The main fund of Brevan Howard, London's biggest global macro trader, fell 2.7 per cent last month but remains up 14 per cent this year. San Francisco-based Clarium Capital, run by Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, was up 18.9 per cent at the end of September after giving back most gains made earlier in the year.

Some large macro funds have lost out this year, though, with Moore Capital's main fund, Fortress Investment's Drawbridge fund and Tudor Investment's BVI fund all down.

Mr Siva-Jothy shot to fame at Goldman in 2001 when he moved within seconds of the first airplane hitting New York's World Trade Center to dump investments and buy options on government bond prices rising.

The trade secured big profits for the bank and contributed to his becoming global head of the bank's macro proprietary trading business.