By Nell Mackenzie and Carolina Mandl
LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) -Some of the world’s largest hedge funds finished 2024 with comfortable double-digit returns, benefiting from chaotic markets, central bank policy changes and a tight U.S. presidential election race.
Hedge funds, which trade several different asset classes from stocks to commodities, navigated volatile markets with some degree of success.
Macro hedge fund Discovery Capital ended 2024 up 52%, after gains across equities, currencies, rates and credit, a source familiar with the performance said, with trades in both emerging and developed countries. In terms of sectors, the fund led by Rob Citrone, had profitable bets in financials and technology, media and telecom (TMT) for instance.
British hedge fund Marshall Wace, which manages almost $71 billion, returned double-digit gains in several of its funds, a source close to the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
Co-founded by British financier Paul Marshall, the firm returned around 14% in its Eureka fund, a source said.
Hedge fund manager Bridgewater Associates’ flagship Pure Alpha 18% volatility fund gained just over 11% in 2024 through Dec. 27, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
Large U.S. multi-strategy firms also posted double-digit gains.
Schonfeld’s flagship hedge fund Strategic Partners was up 19.7% in 2024.
Citadel’s flagship fund Wellington posted a 15.1% gain, while Millennium Management returned 15% in 2024, according to people familiar with the results.
Citadel offered clients the option to cash out Wellington’s profits. Very few clients took up the offer, with redemptions totaling only roughly $300 million out of billions in profit.
Two of D.E. Shaw’s multi-strategy funds posted double-digit returns including its flagship Composite fund, which gained 18% in 2024 and its more macro-oriented fund Oculus, which posted a 36% return in the same period, its best-ever annual performance, said another person close to the matter.
Millennium and D.E. Shaw’s results were first reported by the Financial Times and Bloomberg, respectively.
Jon Caplis, CEO of hedge fund research firm PivotalPath, said there was “a resurgence of the multi-strat space across 2024,” and he expects to see more inflows to the strategy.
Last year’s gains came as rate cuts from the likes of the U.S. Federal Reserve helped push stocks higher, while a decisive presidential election win for Donald Trump and Bank of Japan rate hikes were other catalysts for big market swings.
Hedge funds in 2023 averaged a 5.7% return in the year through November, according to PivotalPath.
