<p>Money some of the top traders made</p>
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- Boone Pickens' bet on crude oil last year helped the Texas investor take home an estimated $1.5 billion, perhaps the highest-ever one-year income, thanks to the surge to record highs in oil and other commodity prices.</p>
<p>According to a magazine report to be published on Monday, Pickens and around half the world's top 100 traders in 2005 focused their investments on the commodities sector, and it paid off. Handsomely.</p>
<p>Trader Monthly, in its third annual list of the wealthiest traders and portfolio managers, found that earnings for at least two savvy investors last year reached the $1 billion milestone for the first time in history.</p>
<p>Pickens, a long-time oil and gas bull, led the pack. His windfall last year easily tops the legendary haul in 1986 of $550 million by bond trader Michael Milken, the report said, even after being adjusted for inflation.</p>
<p>"It was a very good year," Pickens told Reuters.</p>
<p>He declined to comment on the magazine's estimate of his income last year.</p>
<p>But it's clear that his "long crude" position was a solid investment. The average price for oil rose 37 percent to nearly $57 per barrel in 2005, its most expensive year. Natgas rose almost 50 percent.</p>
<p>Gasoline, meanwhile, reached record highs on tight supplies after Hurricane Katrina hit in August and sent oil above $70 a barrel.</p>
<p>Pickens, 77 has about $5 billion under management through his Dallas-based fund company, BP Capital, which has been betting that the world's oil supply can't keep pace with increasing energy demand.</p>
<p>The magazine said returns on his main commodities pool were above 700 percent last year, while his smaller equity fund rose more than 100 percent.</p>
<p>"Yes, my own money is in there," he has said, referring to his operation. "That always impresses the other investors."</p>
<p>CREAM OF THE CROP</p>
<p>All told, the top 100 investors grossed a total of $12.5 billion, almost double the prior year's $6.6 billion, Trader Monthly said.</p>
<p>"This clearly is not indicative of the entire world of traders, this is the cream of the crop," said Rich Blake, a senior editor at the magazine and an author of the report.</p>
<p>"But if you want a sense of what's going on, commodities in 2005 could be the biggest year ever in terms of money made and volume traded."</p>
<p>Blake said the investors employ all manner of strategies, from sophisticated computer programs to fleets of hundreds of analysts and traders making thousands of rapid-fire bets.
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Stevie Cohen, 49, of SAC Capital Advisors in Stamford, Connecticut, No. 2 in this year's round-up of the elite investors, may have taken $1 billion to the bank last year, said the magazine.**
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Third on the list, James Simons, 67, with New York's Renaissance Technologies Corp., earned about $900 million to $1 billion, **it said.
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