YTD Hedge Funds Performance: Big Players Make Early Gains

After a brief hiatus, we're back with a cumulative review of recent hedge fund performance. Our last update was our post on 2008 year end performance numbers and now we're back with a cumulative update. After gathering a bunch of data, here's what we've come up with, in no particular order.

Hedge Fund January, February, & YTD Numbers:

1. John Paulson's Paulson & Co saw its Advantage Plus fund up 8.84% through the end of January. The company was then -0.77% for February, bringing it to 8% for the year through February. Its Credit Opportunities fund was -0.93% for February and sits at 0.22% for the year. Its Enhanced fund was -1.55% for February and 2.08% for the year as of end of February. Lastly, its International fund was -0.86% for February which brought them to 1.07% on the year at that time. Although Paulson operates in numerous markets, we covered the equities portion of its portfolio here.
2. Peter Thiel's Clarium Capital was -2.3% for February and sits up 4.3% year to date as of the end of February. You can see the entire chart breakdown of its performance here as well as its recent equity holdings here (which represents only a small amount of its assets under management).
3. Jim Simons' Renaissance Technologies saw its Institutional Equities Fund -4.61% for February and -8.84% for 2009. We had previously covered Rentec's portfolio just for fun, since it is a quant fund by nature and its near impossible for us to gauge the rhyme or reason behind the fund's picks.
4. Steven Cohen's SAC Capital International fund was up 3.3% for February and sits at 7.12% for 2009. We had previously covered SAC's portfolio just for fun as well, considering its propensity to move in and out of positions quickly.
5. David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital was -1.5% for February and sits at -0.03% for the year at the end of February. We've recently updated Greenlight's portfolio and have also covered its 13F filing too.
6. Philip Falcone's Harbinger Capital Partners was up 0.95% for January 2009 and 4.64% for February, leaving it at 5.26% for the year as of the end of February. We haven't covered its Q4 holdings quite yet, but we've noted numerous recent changes to its portfolio.
7. Lee Ainslie's Maverick Capital saw its Maverick Fund up 1.55% for January 2009 and -2.1% for February, leaving the fund at -0.62% for the year at that time. We had covered its holdings recently here.
8. Andreas Halvorsen's Viking Global has been on fire lately, notching a 7.88% gain in their Global Equities III fund through the latter part of February. Its Viking Global Fund was up 3.43% for February and was 8.21% for the year at the end of that month. We recently covered its long equity positions here, so maybe you can see where its gains are coming from.
9. Chris Shumway's Shumway Capital Partners Ocean Fund was up 2.54% for February and 5.75% for the year as of then.
10. Ken Griffin's Citadel was up 5% in January, and up another 2.6% for February. These are much better numbers from Citadel, which last year saw its flagship funds get annihilated. And, as such, we've noted that Citadel will be starting new hedge funds.
11. Timothy Barakett's Atticus Capital survived a nightmarish year last year, only to have its pain continue somewhat. Its European fund was -0.8% for February and sits -10% for 2009. We just recently covered its portfolio holdings as well.
12. Louis Bacon's Moore Capital Management sees its Emerging Market fund up 10.83% as of the latter part of February. Its Global Fixed Income fund was up 1.92% for the month of January and its Global Investments fund was up 1.55% in the month of January. We just last week examined its equity holdings as well, noting that Moore Capital is a true global macro fund and has a smaller allocation to equities than other funds we track.
13. Bruce Kovner's Caxton Associates saw its Alpha Equity fund -9.32% as of February 24th, 2009 and its Global fund was up 3.03% for January. We just recently covered Caxton's equity holdings here.
14. Paul Tudor Jones' Tudor Investment Corp continues its solid relative performance as it saw its flagship BVI Global fund up 2.85% for the month of January and 1.71% for February, leaving Tudor at 4.61% for the year at that time. Its Tensor Fund was 0.52% for February and is now -0.12% as of the end of February.
15. Barton Biggs' Traxis Partners saw its Traxis Fund -4.63% for February and -10.42% year to date for 2009. We've covered Barton before on the blog as his book, Hedgehogging, is on one of our recommended reading lists.
16. Highbridge's long/short equity fund was -7.88% for the year, through the beginning days of March. Conversely, its Multistrat fund is up 4.5% year to date through the same time frame.
17. Whitney Tilson's T2 Partners was -10.3% for February and sits -13.5% ytd.
18. Ricky Sandler's Eminence Capital was up 4.96% for January and is now up 8% as of the latter portion of February. We've covered its Q3 holdings but haven't gotten to its Q4 positions quite yet.
19. Childrens Investment Fund saw a January '09 return of -4.58%.
20. BlueGold's Global Fund was up 20.2% for February and sits at a 35.6% return for 2009.
21. Avenue International was -0.56% for the month of January.
22. Raj Rajaratnam's Galleon Group sees its Buccaneer fund sitting up 13.39% as of late February. Additionally, its diversified fund was up 9.87% through the same time period. We had previously looked at some of its holdings here.
23. Eric Mindich's Eton Park Capital was up 3% for January 2009. We had previously examined its Q3 holdings and will soon be looking into its Q4 positions.
24. Bluecrest Capital finds themselves up 9.18% as of February 20th.

So, there you have it; some standout performers already this early in 2009. We saw a similar pattern emerge last year, as some big players gained early, only to give back those gains later in the year. We'll have to see if that trend repeats this year. Do note that some of those performance numbers listed above were intra-month numbers, as we're playing catch-up with all the performance figures here. We'll be posting the latest up to date figures as we receive them for March. Keep in mind we're in the midst of our hedge fund portfolio tracking series, where we are

checking the portfolios

of many of the funds listed above.