SOUTHAMPTON, BERMUDA (Reuters) -- Hedge funds managers, once the titans of global currency markets, played only bit parts in last week's euro intervention, underscoring their loss of appetite for big global economic bets.

Rich returns on equities instead are proving far more tantalising, said fund experts at an industry conference here.

Gone are the days when hedge fund kings George Soros and Julian Robertson played a cat-and-mouse game with central banks in the foreign exchange markets.

By using huge amounts of leveraged funds, speculators sometimes taunted central banks with their crushing bets on currencies. At other times speculators would bend to central banks' will by scrambling to cover short positions, managers at a hedge fund conference here said.

When Soros and Robertson, both burned by currency calls in the last two years, reorganised and scaled back their businesses this spring, they drew the curtains on an era when traders used macroeconomic analysis to bet big on fixed income, commodities and currencies.

"There have been big trades that macro managers could have gotten right, but they haven't,'' said Bruce Ruehl, chief investment officer at hedge fund consultants Tremont Advisors.

Huge leveraged funds have been largely absent from the euro's swoon that prompted central bank intervention on Friday to bolster the 21-month old European currency, and from this year's huge run-up in oil prices as well as the recent interest-rate shifts in the US, euro zone and Japan.

Experts here say new managers swelling the ranks of the hedge fund industry are disheartened by modest returns earned recently by global macro funds, and they prefer instead to pursue an equity strategy.

Hedge funds are lightly regulated investment pools that cater to rich investors usually with investable assets of more than $1 million and they often take big, risky market positions by borrowing heavily in hopes of garnering outsized returns.

Eight years ago in his heyday, Soros' macro bets earned him $1 billion when he battled the Bank of England, punishing sterling which ended up leaving the European Exchange Mechanism. But managers' have had a tougher time recently.

Industry tracking group MAR/Hedge, sponsoring this week's conference, said global macro managers posted a median return of only 2.57 percent for the first eight months of the year, the lowest of all tracked strategies. By contrast, managers in the red-hot technology sector saw returns up 19.39 percent.

Even as hedge fund assets grew sharply to reach $205 billion by June, Tass Investment Research, another industry tracking group, said global macro funds saw outflows of $5.6 billion in the second quarter.

Managers blamed a combination of factors -- ranging from improved information technology which is levelling the playing field to the high cost of infrastructure -- for the exit of hedge funds from the macro business. But one of the most important is that Europe launched a common currency.

"The consolidation has been driven through the euro. Now there are only three major currencies to invest in. In turn in the United States, Alan Greenspan's careful handling of the Fed is why we have such a positive environment for equities,'' said Suzanne Currie, managing director at Ardsley Partners.

With Soros and Robertson gone, only a handful of managers still follow the formerly glamorous strategy, leaving no one to actively bet against or with a central bank, industry experts said.

Ironically, before the world's major central banks spent billions to stabilise the euro last Friday, analysts worried such an operation might lack punch because speculators had not pushed the euro down and would not need to cover short trades.

In this trading strategy, investors sell an instrument they do not already own on the bet that it will decline further in price, allowing them to buy it more cheaply when delivery date arrives and to pocket the price difference. But if the price rises unexpectedly, as happens with currency intervention, investors must scramble to buy, or cover their shorts.

But by this week, hedge fund managers here said that the very absence of many big currency speculators today may actually help the central banks in their effort to halt the euro slide.

"The argument could be made that the central banks shot into an open goal with the funds basically helping them out by not actively challenging them in their efforts to put in a (price) floor,'' said one hedge fund manager who still makes major currency plays but asked not to be identified.

What is a hedge fund? A hedge fund is a lightly regulated and highly leveraged private investment partnership that offers investors in stocks, bonds or currency extraordinary gains with above-average risk.