Ken Griffin’s Citadel Beats Steve Cohen’s Point72 With 19% Gain in 2019

(Bloomberg) -- Ken Griffin’s $30 billion Citadel saw its main multistrategy hedge fund soar 19.4% last year, topping rivals including Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management.

Citadel’s Wellington fund gained across all five of the firm’s strategies after besting peers for most of the year, a person familiar with the returns said. Its Tactical Trading fund, a separate multistrategy fund that uses equity and quantitative approaches, rose about 20%. Point72 advanced about 16%, people said.

Citadel and Point72’s performance stands in contrast to the industry. Hedge funds returned 9% last year rebounding from a decline the year before, according to preliminary figures from the Bloomberg Hedge Fund Indices. Hedge Fund Research reported a 7.7% gain for the year on an asset-weighted basis. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 Index rallied 29%, extending the longest bull market in history.

Equities were the best performing fund strategy.

Sculptor Capital Management, formerly called Och Ziff, was up almost 15% return for the year. Dmitry Balyasny’s namesake firm returned 12% in its Atlas Enhanced fund, another person said. Meanwhile, Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management gained 9.8% and ExodusPoint Capital Management, run by Michael Gelband, ended 2019 up 6.8%.

Citadel’s Wellington fund rose 2.3% last month. Citadel also returned 2019 profits in full to investors, amounting to more than $6 billion.

Multistrategy funds trade across assets from company stocks and bonds to currencies and interest rates.

Representatives for the firms declined to comment.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hema Parmar in New York at hparmar6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sam Mamudi at smamudi@bloomberg.net, Alan Mirabella, Melissa Karsh

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