Top Hedge Fund Managers’ First Quarter Long Performance

Published on April 4, 2012 at 12:43 pm by Meena Krishnamsetty in Hedge Funds

Insider Monkey tracks nearly 400 long/short equity hedge funds. Some of these hedge fund managers are like superstars. A couple of years ago the media was making fun of Ray Dalio. Not much after his nearly $4 billion earnings in 2011. John Paulson was the king before Dalio. David Einhorn and Dan Loeb were relatively small player before. Now they become billionaires too. Bill Ackman should join them in the next couple of years. These fund managers are fun to read and write about but it is no secret that hedge fund performance deteriorates as a fund’s AUM swells. That’s why there were only a few superstar fund managers among first quarter’s best hedge fund managers.

BRIDGEWATER ASSOCIATES

Let’s take a look at the first quarter performance of superstar hedge fund managers’ long stock picks in large cap stocks:

1. Bruce Berkowitz: Bruce Berkowitz’s 16 stock picks returned 38.2% during the first quarter.

2. Eddie Lampert’s top picks pulled back a little bit since we last compiled the list of best hedge funds. However his 8 large-cap stock picks still returned 36.9% during the first quarter.

3. Chase Coleman’s top picks gained 27.7%, thanks to his huge bet on Apple (AAPL).

4. David Einhorn had 23 large cap stock picks. They returned 24.1% beating the market by more than 11 percentage points.

5. Stephen Mandel also returned 24%.

6. Howard Marks, Crispin Odey, and Mohnish Pabrai’s stock picks generated returns between 23.3% and 23.6%.

9. Julian Robertson: Billionaire hedge fund manager generated returns of 22.6%. We don’t know where he is getting all these good ideas!

10. Whitney Tilson’s long picks returned 19.9%. I hope he didn’t lose much on the short side.

11. Ken Griffin: 17.2%

12. Leon Cooperman: 16.4%

13. David Tepper: 15.3%

14. Ray Dalio: 15.2%

15. Steve Cohen: 14.9%

16. John Paulson: 14.6%