Rokos Said to Climb 15% in 2016 as Hedge Funds Win on Trump

(Bloomberg) -- Hedge funds run by Rokos Capital Management and Element Capital Management have gained about 15 percent this year, becoming two of the world’s best-performing money pools that seek to profit from global macroeconomic trends, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Jeffrey Talpins’s Element, which oversees $9 billion and is based in New York, was boosted by a 4 percent gain last month, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. That came amid market volatility sparked by Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the U.S. presidential election that benefited macro hedge funds in November. 

Chris Rokos’s London-based fund built on the 9 percent return it had posted this year through Sept. 23. Element had risen 11.5 percent in the first eight months of 2016, following its 2015 gain of almost 23 percent.

Spokesmen for both firms declined to comment.

The funds join peers such as Brevan Howard Asset Management and Rubicon Fund Management in turning a political shock into profit last month. Brevan Howard’s main hedge fund gained 5.6 percent in the first 18 days of November, erasing earlier losses this year, while Rubicon surged almost 20 percent in the same period to return to the black.

Macro funds in general rose 0.8 percent last month, according to research firm Eurekahedge. They have lagged behind the industry this year, gaining 2.2 percent through November, compared with 3.7 percent for the research firm’s broader index.

Rokos, who previously co-founded Brevan Howard, is seeking to raise as much as $2 billion during the first quarter of next year to boost his firm’s current assets of about $4 billion, a person with knowledge of the matter said last month.

The investment firm, which counts Blackstone Group LP among its initial investors, plans to raise money amid a widespread backlash against hedge funds this year from their clients because of poor returns and high fees, leading some of the industry’s largest firms to cut charges. Investors pulled about $7.3 billion from macro hedge funds and $77 billion from the overall industry in the first 10 months of the year, according to data provider eVestment.

To contact the reporters on this story: Hema Parmar in New York at hparmar6@bloomberg.net, Nishant Kumar in London at nkumar173@bloomberg.net, Katherine Burton in New York at kburton@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Neil Callanan at ncallanan@bloomberg.net, Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Ross Larsen