Investors targeting struggling energy companies are learning a painful lesson: Bankruptcy isn’t always the bottom. Those funds specialize in picking through bonds and loans to find ones that trade at too deep a discount and could rebound or be converted into equity as their issuers are restructured. But the strategy has turned in bad results this year, showing how hard it has been for investors to time the bottom of the energy bust. Investors bought up the deeply discounted loans and bonds of companies nearing or under bankruptcy protection, including oil-and-gas producer Samson Resources Corp. and Energy Future Holdings Corp., the Texas power company formerly known as TXU Corp., thinking they were near their lowest point. Yet they have continued to fall along with oil and gas prices. “Being too early was, in retrospect, a flaw in how [distressed-energy investments] got executed,” said David Fann, chief executive of TorreyCove […]