ADVERTISEMENT

Balyasny Hedge Fund Tops Peers in July as Markets Rally

Balyasny Hedge Fund Tops Peers in July as Markets Rally

(Bloomberg) -- Dmitry Balyasny beat his biggest hedge fund competitors in July, benefiting from the rally in stocks and bonds.

Balyasny Asset Management returned 2.3%, the best performance among his multistrategy peers, bringing year-to-date gains for the $6 billion firm to 10%, according to people familiar with the matter.

The firm made money from all of its strategies, including equities, wagers on macroeconomic trends, credit and corporate events. Equity returns were led by health care and technology, media and telecommunications companies. The financial, consumer and energy sectors also contributed, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private.

Here’s how some of the other funds in the multistrategy pack did.

FundJulyYear-to-July 31
Citadel Wellington0.9%14.6%
Citadel Tactical Trading1.2%13.6%
Oz Master Fund-0.6%11%
Point72 Asset Management1.4%10.6%
Balyasny Asset Management2.3%10.2%
Millennium Management0.8%5.4%
ExodusPoint Capital Management-0.1%3.3%
Carlson Double Black Diamond-0.1%1.6%

The market rally has helped the hedge fund industry recover this year after a rough 2018. Funds, on average, gained 6% in 2019 on an asset-weighted basis after climbing 1.2% in July, according to Hedge Fund Research Inc.

Billionaire Ken Griffin’s $30 billion Citadel leads performance for the year among the multistrategy giants, with its main fund surging 14.6% in the first seven months. In July it climbed about 1%. The firm’s Tactical Trading fund, a separate multistrategy fund employing equity and quantitative approaches, gained 1.2% in July and 13.6% year-to-date.

Och-Ziff Capital Management Group Inc., founded by Dan Och, lost 0.6% in July after gaining 2.3% in June. Year-to-date, it rose 11%.

Representatives for the firms declined to comment.

Elsewhere in the industry, Viking Global Investors, the firm run by Andreas Halvorsen, saw its equity-focused hedge fund lose 0.9% in July. That brought year-to-date gains to 16.1%, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Renaissance Technologies, the behemoth quantitative investment firm founded by former military code breaker Jim Simons, is up 7.2% this year in its Institutional Equities Fund after gaining about 1.9% in July. The flagship hedge fund at Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management, which focuses on investing in TMT stocks, has gained 12.6% in 2019 after climbing 1.4% in July.

Despite the positive performance, the managers all trailed benchmark stock indexes. The S&P 500 Index handed investors gains of 20% with dividends reinvested.

--With assistance from Hema Parmar.

To contact the reporters on this story: Sammy Criscitello in Boston at scriscitello@bloomberg.net;Katia Porzecanski in New York at kporzecansk1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Mirabella at amirabella@bloomberg.net, Katherine Burton, Melissa Karsh

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.