market folly

Time to get a quick update on how hedge funds performed in April of 2009. After starting off 2009 on the right foot, a few funds were caught off guard with the sharp rally, as it is has started to affect performance. We previously got a peek at their mid-April performance and now we're here with the month end results.

International Financial Services London thinks hedge fund assets could drop more than 20% in 2009. And, this would be in addition to the 30% drop we saw last year. Obviously, only time will tell. But, we'd wager that it would take another major market shift to really cause a second major wave. We've already identified some of the biggest asset losers in 2008 were. And, in general, very prominent names still top the 2009 hedge fund rankings. Data shows that redemptions for April fell to $8.6 billion, down from the $15.7 billion redeemed in March. As we've said before, we think the major tidal wave is behind us and smaller ripples will continue until the system stabilizes (bar any unforeseen circumstances... which unfortunately we can't rule out quite yet). At the end of April, hedge fund assets in general were around $1.32 trillion.

Hedge Funds in general were +3.2% for the month of April.

SAC Capital (Steven Cohen): Their International fund was -0.8% for April and is now +9.9% year to date.

Pershing Square (Bill Ackman): International fund was +6.8% for April, and now +10.8% year to date. We've detailed a lot of Ackman's recent maneuvers, as he takes an active role in his Target and General Growth positions. Their performance breakdown shows that in terms of positions greater than 0.5% of their portfolio, they have 5 longs and 3 shorts.

Greenlight Capital (David Einhorn): Einhorn's crew had a solid April, +9%, bringing them up to +13.8% for 2009. We recently covered his new portfolio positions & investor letter.

TPG Axon: Their LP was -2% for April and sits at +4.3% year-to-date.

Tiger Global (Chase Coleman): The Tigers were -12.9% for April and are now -8.1% for 2009. Their pain can be sourced from their short positions in REITs and financials. Tiger still has high conviction in those shorts despite the market rally, as we wrote about when we recently covered Tiger's latest investor letter.

Clarium Capital (Peter Thiel): This global macro hedge fund was +1.7% for April and are now -0.3% year-to-date. When we covered Clarium's April performance, we noted that they were net short US equities, among other positions.

Lastly, we note that Renaissance Technologies (Jim Simons) has had a rough year in some of their funds, along with many other quants. Their RIEF fund was down over 9% for April and is down over 17% for 2009 as of the end of April.


If you missed our previous updates, we've also covered some March '09 numbers, February '09 numbers, as well as 2008 year end numbers.