Bridgewater’s Main Hedge Fund Loses About 20% in Q1 (Pensions&Investments)
Ray Dalio‘s flagship hedge fund at Bridgewater Associates ended the first quarter down about 20%, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Bridgewater extended this year’s decline after getting caught on the wrong side of the market sell-off that began in late February as a result of the rapidly spreading coronavirus. The firm’s Pure Alpha II strategy fell about 16% in March after posting smaller losses in the first two months of the year, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Mr. Dalio, who earlier this year urged investors not to miss out on an opportunity to benefit from strong markets, wrote in mid-March that the pandemic hit the firm at the “worst possible moment” because Bridgewater’s portfolios were tilted to benefit from a rise in the market. Bridgewater, with roughly $160 billion in assets, manages the world’s biggest hedge fund.
Four Citadel Portfolio Managers Leave After Market Dives (Bloomberg)
Four equity portfolio managers were fired from Ken Griffin’s Citadel hedge fund last week, after one of the most volatile months for stocks on record. The four managers are Chris Connor, who ran a technology portfolio; Tio Charbaghi and Steve Bergman, who both ran baskets of industrial stocks; and Chip Fortson, who ran a book of financial stocks, according to people familiar with the firm. The managers all worked in the firm’s Global Equities group, which got a new head at the beginning of March, when Justin Lubell took on the role. He previously worked for Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management.
Billionaire Bill Ackman Says He’s ‘Beginning to Get Optimistic’ About a Coronavirus Recovery, Weeks After Saying ‘Hell is Coming’ (Business Insider)
After profiting billions by protecting against the coronavirus market rout, Bill Ackman is hopeful the pandemic will end sooner than expected. The Pershing Square Capital Management CEO took to Twitter Sunday afternoon with new confidence in the virus’s effective containment. He cited the first one-day drop in New York-based virus deaths that took place Saturday, as well as the shutdowns taking place around the country. The number of asymptomatic cases could also be far higher than estimated, the billionaire investor said, bringing the population closer to valuable herd immunity. The rate of less-dangerous cases could be “50x higher than expected,” Ackman tweeted, and antibody tests nearing distribution “will definitively answer this question hopefully soon.”
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Anthony Scaramucci Isn’t Liking Lockdown. He’s Loving It (Institutional Investor)
The Mooch sits unfazed. Ensconced in his Long Island home, Anthony Scaramucci is enduring isolation and crisis like the rest of humanity — although, perhaps, with less hardship than most. But he’s quick to point out that this is, in fact, his ninth financial crisis since he started working on Wall Street in August 1989 (at Goldman Sachs, after graduating from Harvard Law School). As such, his general mien: not giving much of a fuck about anything but his truth.
The Winning And Losing Hedge Funds Of The March Pandemic (Forbes)
Pierre Andurand is an oil trader known for making big bets. His Andurand Capital hedge funds were coming off two straight years of losses, but in February Andurand wagered the coronavirus would shake up the oil market and he started to short oil aggressively. With the price of Brent crude crashing below $23 in March, Andurand’s hedge funds performed incredibly well. His Andurand Commodities Discretionary Enhanced Fund soared by 152.9% in March and returned 122.2% in the first three months for 2020. The Andurand Commodities Fund rose by 63.7% last month and has returned 53.1% in 2020. Andurand Capital’s assets, which were about $1 billion a year ago, are roughly split between the two funds.
€5Bn Fund Family Holds up in Market Turmoil (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – With performance figures being released for March, many Nordic hedge funds have turned in their worst month in years. A handful of funds such as Nordea’s Alpha family of funds emerged as the industry’s bright spots amid the recent turmoil. The three Nordea funds part of the Nordic Hedge Index, which collectively manage over €5 billion, generated positive uncorrelated returns in March, ranging from 2.2 percent to 4.9 percent. Nordea’s Alpha family – comprised of Alpha 7 MA Fund, Alpha 10 MA Fund and Alpha 15 MA Fund – all share the same investment approach but exhibit different risk-return profiles.
Hedge Funds’ Defensiveness Finally Pays Off (The Wall Street Journal)
The $3 trillion hedge-fund industry, with its defensive approach to investing, has significantly underperformed the stock market over the past decade. But in the current market turmoil, hedge funds have been holding up much better than stocks. During the first two months of the year (February being the latest full month for which hedge-fund data is available from the Backstop BarclayHedge database), the hedge-fund industry lost 3.04% compared with the S&P 500’s decline of 8.27%. Initial, incomplete first-quarter data through…
