The Highest-Earnings Hedge Fund Managers within the Pandemic

These managers banked

Today Institutional Investor announced the 20th edition of its Rich List, one of the most watched rankings of hedge fund manager performance. Every year, financial tycoons rethink the magazine’s estimates, whose fortunes are highest.

Last year, the top 25 managers made $ 32 billion Even when the economy collapsed and the markets shook. Overall, hedge funds achieved a return of 11.6 percent last year, according to Hedge Fund Research. That was the best performance in a decade, but not enough to keep up with the S&P 500, which was up 16 percent.

“It might not seem like it, but it remains a fact,” wrote the magazine’s editors.

Here are the top earners as per the list:

Izzy Englander from Millennium Management, which earned an estimated $ 3.8 billion and whose flagship fund returned 26 percent.
Jim Simons from Renaissance Technologies, which made $ 2.6 billion and whose flagship returned 76 percent (but whose fund was open to outside investors lost a lot).
Chase Coleman from Tiger Global Management, which earned $ 2.5 billion and whose top fund returned 48 percent.
Ken Griffin from Citadel, which made $ 1.8 billion and whose main fund raised 24 percent. (The company made headlines for other reasons as well.)
Steve Cohen from Point72 Asset Management and David Tepper from Appaloosa Management both made an estimated $ 1.7 billion.
The rest of the best: Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management ($ 1.6 billion), Andreas Halvorsen from Viking Global Investors and Scott Shleifer from Tiger Global (both $ 1.5 billion) and Bill Ackman from Pershing Square Capital Management ($ 1.4 billion).

WHAT HAPPENS HERE

New restrictions for the Paycheck Protection Program. For two weeks, starting on Wednesday, only companies with fewer than 20 employees can apply for loans from the failure-prone emergency aid program. Separately, the Small Business Administration will revise the calculation of self-employed loans.

Boeing calls for the grounding of another aircraft model. The company recommended a worldwide flight stop on its Model 777 with a specific Pratt & Whitney engine. The move came after a United Airlines flight over Colorado suffered an engine failure and debris was thrown over the neighborhoods before landing safely in Denver.

The Texan energy markets are scrutinized. The state’s uniquely independent and largely deregulated power grid has been criticized for poorly prepared for last week’s severe winter storms and saddling some customers with thousands of dollars in utility bills.

Good news for Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. Data from Israel showed that just one dose prevented 75 percent of infections, which may support arguments for delaying second shots. (Research hasn’t established how long the single-dose protection lasts.) The drug companies also announced that their vaccine can be safely stored in standard freezers for up to two weeks, which could mean that it can be used on a larger scale.

A security breach reveals the clubhouse’s weaknesses. An unidentified user streamed audio from multiple chat rooms on the increasingly popular social network to a third-party website. The Stanford Internet Observatory, which first highlighted privacy concerns in the clubhouse, warned users that all of their activity on the app will be public and recorded.

Exclusive: Traeger starts a sale

The high-end grill maker has been asking investment banks what either a sale or an IPO could be, DealBook hears. Traeger, with an operating profit of around 160 million US dollars, is growing rapidly: Sales rose by more than 20 percent last year. The company is hoping for a valuation of more than $ 3 billion, which may be too high for a buyer but could satisfy the public market’s appetite. The private equity firm AEA Investors, which took control of Traeger in 2017 for an undisclosed amount, declined to comment.

Grill sales rose during the pandemic, when people stopped home, they lit the grill. Traeger’s wood pellet powered grills can cost thousands of dollars and are equipped with Wi-Fi (“WiFire”) technology to adjust the heat settings of a smartphone. Grilling at home could slow down as the economy re-opens and people spend less time at home. In this case, however, Traeger also sells accessories and grills for travel.

Traeger is the newest company looking to benefit from a pandemicTesting the high premiums investors are willing to give out. McCormick paid $ 800 million to buy spicy cholula sauce as home cooking boosted spice sales, and Hormel paid $ 3.35 billion to buy Kraft Heinz’s once-stalled Planters business when consumers were looking for convenience foods. Shares in Yeti, a maker of fancy coolers, more than doubled in the past year, translating into a market cap of $ 6.5 billion.

“When the pandemic ends, cash could be released like melting snow in the Rocky Mountains.”

– The Times’s Ben Casselman on rising economists’s expectations that a charged economic boom could emerge at the end of the pandemic.

Tesla’s Bitcoin bet is paying off

The price of Bitcoin set another record over the weekend, briefly rising above $ 58,000 per coin. And Elon Musk tweeted about it, cementing his status as one of the most famous supporters of crypto.

Tesla will make more profits from buying Bitcoin than from selling electric cars. According to a research note from Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities. A few weeks ago, the company announced it had bought $ 1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin to diversify its balance sheet. Bitcoin’s rapid surge since then translates into a profit of around $ 1 billion on paper. That’s more than Tesla made from selling cars last year when it first made an annual profit. (Tesla also made more of another tangential business, selling renewable energy loans to other automakers.)

Become more companies now follow his example? Such gaudy numbers could make CFOs think twice about cash and low-yield bonds on their balance sheets. “It was clearly a good initial investment, and a trend that we expect could affect other public companies in the next 12 to 18 months,” Ives wrote. He believes that less than 5 percent of public companies will convert corporate funds into cryptocurrency, which would still be a huge leap.

Next week

The House of Biden is expected to pass President Biden $ 1.9 trillion stimulus bill at the end of the week, likely in a party line vote. The Senate can take it up shortly afterwards.

The Fed chairman Jay Powell testifies before Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday and will most likely emphasize the need for further economic stimulus.
On Tuesday, HSBC The Financial Times reports that the bank may also have announced steps to move top executives from London to Hong Kong.
Further earnings highlights are Home Depot on Tuesday, Nvidia On Wednesday, Airbnb and Foreclosure on Thursday and Berkshire Hathaway on Saturday when Warren Buffett’s widely watched annual letter on the state of the economy, markets and politics is expected.

READ THE SPEED

deals

Today in SPACs: Elliott Management, Michael Dell and former Xerox boss Ursula Burns have all requested to raise blank check funds. And Asian tycoons really want to come into play. (Bloomberg, WSJ)
According to reports, a group of activist investors is looking for nine out of twelve directorships at Kohl’s department store chain. (WSJ)
LVMH is buying half of Armand de Brignac, Jay-Z’s champagne brand, with a bet that the “super luxury” market – a bottle can cost as much as $ 65,000 – will rebound from the pandemic. (NYT)

Politics and politics

The Trump administration has quietly and unusually lifted sanctions against Israeli mining magnate Dan Gertler in the past few days after lobbying the likes of Alan Dershowitz. (NYT)

technology

Venture capital firm Sequoia informed investors that it had been hacked and that some of their personal and financial information may have been stolen. (Axios)
Hosts unhappy with Airbnb’s pandemic policies are moving their business elsewhere. (NYT)
The UK antitrust agency has told American tech giants that they should expect a series of investigations into their business practices this year. (FT)

The best of the rest

The level of short positions in US stocks has dropped dramatically since the meme stock frenzy. (Axios)
After previously undisclosed contracts emerged, McKinsey has become a draw for criticism over the introduction of vaccines in France. (NYT)
“The Boredom Economy” (NYT)

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