According to Bloomberg, John W. Henry & Co., the investment firm run by the Boston Red Sox baseball team's owner, is among hedge funds that suffered their worst drops in almost 18 months in July as oil and other commodities retreated from records.

John W. Henry lost 17 percent on its JWH GlobalAnalytics fund, the firm said on its Web site. Altis Partners Ltd.'s $1 billion global futures program fell 18 percent, paring its gain for the year to 10 percent. London-based Man Group Plc'sAHL Diversified Futures Ltd., the computer program that trades about $25 billion of investments, dropped 5.5 percent through July 28, or a loss of about $1.37 billion in the month.

John W. Henry's oldest pool, the Financial and Metals Portfolio, slid 11 percent in the month, according to the Boca Raton, Florida-based firm's Web site. That loss erased gains for the year, and left the fund down 2.6 percent this year.

Man Group, the world's largest publicly traded hedge fund manager, said Aug. 4 its Athena Guaranteed Futures Ltd. fund, which is backed by AHL, dropped 7.8 percent in July, the most in more than three years.

Altis, based in Jersey, was co-founded by Zbigniew Hermaszewski, who pioneered computerized trading systems in Europe as director of Sabre Fund Management from 1994 to 1997. The firm said July's decline wasn't unexpected.

``We had a 22 percent up-month in February so it goes both ways,'' said Georgia Nakou, a spokeswoman for Altis in Jersey. ``We've made quite a lot and this month we gave some back.''

winton Capital Management LLC, founded by David Harding, another pioneer in computerized trading who co-founded the AHL program in 1987, lost 4.6 percent in its $7.2 billion Winton Futures Fund in July, leaving the fund up 13 percent for the year.