Forbes Magazine is touting a Bermuda company as providing a way to get a home-made hedge fund.

The leading US business magazine said Invesdex, a company set up on the Island in 1999 which has gone full swing this year, makes managing your portfolio easier and safer.

In the December 24 issue, which will be on news stands soon, John H. Christy of Forbes Global said using futures by hedging can be a useful tool in the uncertain times facing the market at the moment.

The article states: "Using futures to manage a portfolio and bet on index moves can be tricky-and dangerous. Bermuda's Invesdex makes it a little easier and safer for investors.

"Fooling around with futures is not for the faint of heart. Sure, the payoff can be enormous, but their highly leveraged nature means that investors can also lose considerably more than their initial investment if markets move against them. For this reason, even the most sophisticated investors are often best served by leaving these risky derivatives alone."

But the article said this was unfortunate because when used for hedging, futures can be a powerful tool for the management of risk in volatile times.

It added: "The liquidity of the global futures market also makes them very cost-effective, especially for active traders. With a wide range of underlying stock and bond indexes, commodities and currencies to choose from, a carefully constructed portfolio of futures positions can quickly deliver plenty of diversification."

And it said Hamilton-based Invesdex "has developed a clever way to allow investors to take advantage of futures while reducing the risk".

It added: "Here's how it works. A minimum investment of $100,000 with Invesdex gets you its MarketPlus contract to manage your portfolio. Money can be invested, short or long, in three futures contracts - the S&P 500, the Russell 2000 or the Nasdaq 100 - or it can be placed in cash."

And it said Invesdex plans to add more futures contracts in time.

It quoted Valere Costello, an Invesdex cofounder as saying: "We're limited only by the futures markets' capacity to create contracts."

The article explains that when the investor wants to make a trade, Invesdex buys or sells a futures contract for its own account. When the investor wants to cash out, he settles with Invesdex and receives the same return as if he owned the contract directly (less Invesdex's fees). In the UK such an arrangement is known as a "contract for differences".

It said Invesdex executes trades for investors every 30 minutes, allowing it to aggregate and net out positions before each round and added that because investors never directly own the contracts, they don't have the unlimited liability that a traditional futures holder has.

It said: "If an investor makes a mistake, the order can be canceled, as long as it's done before the 30-minute cutoff. If it isn't, the position can be closed 30 minutes after that."

Mr. Costello added: "The longest anyone can be stuck with a mistake or bad trade is 30 minutes."

But you do have to catch your error nobody's watching out for you.

Forbes said MarketPlus' biggest advantage of all is the user interface. Trades are placed online, and investors' positions are displayed in a "dashboard" layout on the computer screen.

It said if you want 70 percent of your money in the S&P 500 and 30 percent in Nasdaq, simply slide the bars on the screen to 70 percent and 30 percent stating that it makes trading adjustments and regular rebalancing "a snap".

Mr. Costello said in the article: "It's a bit like a do-it-yourself hedge fund."

The articles states that another advantage is taxes. It said: "Investors trade with Invesdex Capital and don't cash out after each trade, so no taxable event takes place (depending, of course, on an investor's jurisdiction). Only when money is redeemed from the account are capital gains or losses booked."

It added that the software's convenience comes with a price. Invesdex charges 1.4 percent on money invested in index futures. (Cash that's sitting on the sidelines earns interest but also incurs a fee of 50 basis points.)

And it said investors also pay one basis point on every trade; a $100,000 contract costs $10. The service ends up costing about as much as a typical actively managed offshore equity fund.

In the end the author asks: "Is it worth it? That depends on how you use it. If you're merely interested in buying a portfolio of index funds and holding them for ten to 15 years, MarketPlus isn't for you. You can get plenty of index funds and exchange-traded funds that charge from 0.15 percent to 0.30 percent a year versus MarketPlus' 1.4 percent plus."