Mr. Fishman is not the first hedge fund manager to run into trouble  and he certainly will not be the last. After years of explosive growth, this secretive, sometimes volatile corner of the financial world is entering a dangerous new era. The running turmoil in the markets is stirring fears that more of these funds will fail, some, perhaps, spectacularly.

“This will be the year with the highest number of hedge fund failures given the huge number of new and untested hedge funds,” said Bradley H. Alford, founder of the Atlanta-based Alpha Capital Management, an investment advisory business.

“Last year there were some easy trades: short financials, short subprime, long non-U.S and emerging markets. This year there’s no clear trend and no safe place to hide.” So far few funds have suffered the same fate as Sailfish Capital. But the signs are troubling. The average stock-picking hedge fund sank 4.1 percent in January. While that tumble was not as steep as the one taken by the broad stock market  the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 6 percent  it nonetheless represented the hedge fund industry’s worst showing since November 2000. Few of the investment strategies employed by these funds made money.

Big-name funds are suffering. David Slager and Timothy R. Barakett, who run the Atticus European Fund, lost more than 13 percent, and Lee Ainslie, who heads Maverick Capital, lost 9 percent through Jan. 25, according to SYZ & Company, which tallies hedge fund returns. (Compare that with 2007 performance when the funds returned 27.7 percent and 26.9 percent, respectively.)

Even Goldman Sachs, which turned out record profit last year while many other Wall Street banks stumbled, is struggling to make money for its hedge fund investors. Its $7 billion Goldman Sachs Investment Partners fund, started on Jan. 1, fell 6 percent last month.