Mets owner Steve Cohen’s Point72, Ken Griffin’s Citadel and Izzy Englander’s Millennium were among the best-performing hedge funds in the first half of the year as Wall Street’s biggest investment firms rebound from a weak 2023.
Point72, the Connecticut-based hedge fund run by Cohen, is up 8.7% this year. Obtained by Business Insider.
Flagship funds run by Citadel and Millennium both posted strong gains in the first half of the year.
Citadel’s flagship fund, Wellington, was up 8.1% by the end of June, while Millennium’s flagship fund was up 6.9%.
Citadel’s Tactical Trading Fund has posted the biggest return so far this year, at 13.7%, a source familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.
However, the performance of top hedge funds continued to underperform the S&P 500 Index, which rose more than 16% over the same period.
Last year, Cohen, Griffin and Millennium’s Izzy Englander also failed to keep up with the S&P 500 or Nasdaq.
Overall, hedge funds reported an average gain of 5.2% through the end of May, according to Hedge Fund Research.
Schonfeld, a Long Island-based former family office turned hedge fund run by math genius Ryan Tolkin, 37, delivered some of the biggest investment returns in the first half of this year.
Mr. Schonfeld’s Fundamental Equity fund is up 11% in the first half of the year, including a 2.6% gain in June, while the firm’s flagship fund, Strategic Partners, finished the year up 10.3%.
Schonfeld’s performance follows a weaker performance in 2023 for the firm’s flagship fund, which rose 3%.
The hedge fund plans to hire an additional 40 investment professionals, including eight portfolio managers, in 2024 after cutting staff last year, according to the people.
Schonfeld, Point72, Citadel and Millennium all declined to comment.
Quantitative equities, tactical trading, global macro, relative value and credit have been some of the most important investment strategies so far this year, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
For Schonfeld, technology, industrials and healthcare were the sectors that contributed most to equity performance, while geographically Asia was the main highlight.
Hedge funds are starting to disclose to clients their performance for the first half of the year, a period when global markets were strong.
MSCI’s global stock index of 47 countries has risen about 11% since January, while the S&P 500 has surged 15% in the first half of the year, mainly due to gains in large-cap stocks such as Nvidia.
Last month, Bloomberg News reported that Cohen was looking to raise $1 billion to buy a stake in the artificial intelligence company.
With post wire
