Pensions & Investments reviewed 2024 hedge fund performance for some of the largest firms based on documents, sources familiar with returns data, filings and media reports. Firms either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
AQR Capital Management, which described seeing more pension fund interest last year, had several funds post positive returns. It’s multistrategy Apex fund, which launched in 2020, was up 15.1%. Its Delphi long/short equity strategy was up 24.1% for the year. And the trend-following Helix strategy finished the year up 17.9%.
Bridgewater Associate’s Pure Alpha fund returned 11.3% for the year and its All Weather fund was up 7.2%. The firm’s China Total Return fund was up 35%.
Ken Griffin’s Citadel saw its flagship Wellington fund return 15.1%, its tactical trading fund returned 22.3%, while its fundamental equity fund was up 18% and its global fixed-income fund finished the year up 9.7%.
Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management finished the year up 15% and as of year-end had $72.3 billion in assets under management.
D.E. Shaw saw its largest fund — the multistrategy Composite — end 2024 up 18%, while its macro-oriented multistrategy Oculus fund was up 36.1%, compared with 7.9% a year earlier.
Schonfeld Strategic Advisors saw a turnaround; its main fund returned 20% last year, while Schonfeld Fundamental Equity returned 21%.
Steven Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management returned 19%, while Dmitry Balyasny’s Balyasny Asset Management finished the year up 13.6%, Cinctive Capital Management returned 22.8% and Verition Fund Management finished up 11.53%.
Renaissance Technologies saw its Institutional Equities Fund end the year up 22.7% while its Institutional Diversified Alpha Fund finished up 15.6%
Seth Klarman’s Baupost finished the year up around 9%, while Graham Capital Management’s quant and discretionary macro Proprietary Matrix fund returned 11.86% and its Tactical Trend fund returned 6.68%.
Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square finished the year up 10.2% after finishing 2023 up 26.7%, according to a figure on its website.
Capital Fund Management’s Stratus fund posted returns of 14.22%.
More allocations to come?
The year 2024 will go down as “one of the best years in over a decade plus,” for hedge funds, said Tim Ng, a senior consultant at Fiducient Advisors.
Moves in currency, rates and equities as well as global elections “set up a perfect scenario where you had dispersions across several different assets classes, which helped hedge funds achieve great returns last year,” he said.
Ng said the overall opinion on hedge funds has shifted with many allocators seeing a place in overall asset allocations especially vis-à-vis traditional stocks.
But while hedge funds put up good performance in 2024, it remains to be seen if investors that have been drawn to other segments of alternatives in recent years, including private credit, will increase their allocations.
“I think the pendulum is starting to swing back towards hedge funds a little bit,” Evanston’s VanGelder said, adding they are having more conversations around the role hedge funds can play in portfolios as true diversifiers.
“I would say we probably have yet to see that really change in terms of investor allocations,” she said. “But, I think on the back of a strong year last year and more of this dialogue, it perhaps is kind of set to change … overall positive outlook for flows for the industry, I think, as we enter 2025.”
In recent weeks, pension funds have made some sizable hedge fund commitments.
The $82.2 billion Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association, Pasadena, Calif., committed $600 million to Mariner Atlantic Multi-Strategy Fund, a multistrategy hedge fund managed by Mariner Investment Group.
The $45.3 billion Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System, Des Moines, approved investments in several hedge fund strategies including AQR’s Helix Strategy, Brevan Howard’s Alpha Strategies Master Fund, Bracebridge’s Absolute Return Composite, Blackstone’s Strategic Opportunity Fund and Davidson Kempner’s Navigator Fund.
At the same time, 2024 still brought plenty of hedge fund closures, with HFR tracking 375 fund openings and 326 fund closures, through the third quarter of 2024.
Hindenburg Research, a hedge fund known for its research as a short seller, announced its closure in a letter last week.
