What are some intelligent questions to ask a hedge fund manager who focuses on credit trading?

They use any instrument available. Mostly stocks, options, CFDs. Depends what the particular fund is.

Some do a lot of pre-IPOs.

There is no real favorite; every manager brings his own strategies that he has developed over time to the fund. And believe me, there are a lot of different strategies out there. I have personally tested over 150.

That being said, most hedge funds underperform the market. I can't prove this, but I would strongly suspect that most successful hedge fund managers are value investors like Buffett. Value investing works so well because if you're doing it correctly it's pretty hard to lose.

The problem is it can take a long time for your positions to pay off, whereas investors always want to make a million next month.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.