Hedge fund rankings 2015

This article is by Melissa Karsh and Nathaniel E. Baker of Bloomberg Brief. It appeared first in the special edition of Bloomberg Brief | Hedge Fund Rankings 2015.  

Hedge funds attracted a net $44 billion in assets globally last year, the smallest amount since 2012, according to data compiled by Hedge Fund Research Inc. That reflects a volatile year, when unanticipated economic events rattled markets and led to declines and losses for many funds. Others were hurt by crowded and sometimes concentrated trades and poorly timed bets on energy as oil prices continued to fall.

Still, there were bright spots: many long-term holdings paid off and some managers made well-timed buys, while others combed through small-caps or illiquid securities to find opportunities for arbitrage. Even some funds that didn’t perform particularly well were diversified or hedged enough to protect their investors from the worst of the “downside,” in a year that had plenty of it.

This special report on 2015 Hedge Fund Rankings looks at two groups — the top 50 best performers with $1 billion or more in assets and the top 25 best-performing hedge funds with $250 million to $1 billion in assets. The rankings are based on data compiled by Bloomberg’s Anibal Arrascue and Laurie Meisler and information supplied by hedge-fund firms, databases and investors.

In analyzing the returns, a few key themes emerged:

• Asia hedge funds as a group performed better than their competitors in Europe and North America in what was the most volatile year for Chinese equities in a decade.
• It was a year for stock pickers, with half of the top 50 funds focused on equity markets. Sector-specific strategies were some of the biggest winners, with Perceptive Advisors’s life sciences fund taking the top spot on the list of hedge funds with more than $1 billion in assets.
• The sector-specific theme was not limited to the U.S., or even to equity markets, as Ping Capital Management’s macro strategy, which topped the medium-sized funds list, successfully bet on Argentina.
• Multimanager firms featured prominently on the top 50 list. Perhaps as a result, they are in expansion mode and ramping up hiring in 2016.
• Many managers who once called Steven A. Cohen their boss performed well last