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Atreaus Family Office Gains 11% Months After Hedge Fund Shutdown

Atreaus Family Office Gains 11% Months After Hedge Fund Shutdown

(Bloomberg) -- Atreaus Family, a family office started by Todd Edgar after he shut his struggling hedge fund last year, is gaining from the market swings fueled by the coronavirus crisis.

The New York-based firm’s main money pool rose 10.9% in March, taking year-to-date returns to 9.6%, according to a performance letter seen by Bloomberg. The bulk of the profits were generated by betting the U.S. dollar would rise against the euro and pound, while fixed-income and short equity wagers also came good.

“We have woken up one morning to find a massive sinkhole in our backyard,” Edgar wrote in the letter. “Every day the sinkhole changes -- it gets bigger in some areas and smaller in others. We have no way of knowing how deep the sinkhole is or when it’s going to stop growing and changing.”

Edgar declined to comment beyond the letter.

He previously ran Atreaus Capital, a macro hedge fund that shut in early 2019 after years of poor performance. Its flagship strategy, which bet on macroeconomic events, commodities, fixed income and equities, reached $2 billion at its peak. Atreaus had received an investment from Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

Edgar started managing his own money in August last year and now oversees $70 million. Looking ahead, he plans to build up his positions in U.S. stocks and gold.

“There’s no hurry. I think things get worse before they get better, so I’m going to stick with a ‘buy the dips in small’ execution strategy for now and we’ll see how it goes,” he wrote in the letter.

Edgar hasn’t been an all-out winner this year. He took his family to Vail, Colorado in March for what was meant to be a two-week holiday, but the pandemic shut down the resort on their first day in the mountains.

He was forced to pay for a private jet, which was “worth it on a virus-related ‘there’s no place like home’ level,” he said. But he called it a “complete and total waste of money on another level –- my time ain’t that valuable.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.