Hedge funds are having quite a year. I mean, sure, they’re only up 4.9% over a nine-month period that has seen the S&P500 rise 21%, but that’s the best they’ve done in years.
Crispin Odey’s hedge fund? Not so much.
Mr Odey, founder of London-based Odey Asset Management, lost 12.7 per cent in September in his European hedge fund, according to numbers sent to investors and reviewed by the Financial Times. That left his fund down 18.1 per cent for the year.
No George Soros, indeed. Odey has been burned by his shorts against financial stocks, which have surged in spite of the best efforts of his friend Boris Johnson to bring upon the economic apocalypse Odey has been so excitedly awaiting. And also by an economic apocalypse he failed to foresee, in Argentina.
Luckily for Odey, however, Johnson is still hard at it, and those Brexit-based shorts may yet pay off. Indeed, they might already be doing so, although Boris is gonna have to work even harder—something he is allergic to—for Odey if the latter’s going to avoid a fourth losing year in five.
This month, it had regained 4.5 per cent as of the middle of last week, reducing year-to-date losses to 14.4 per cent.
Crispin Odey hit in volatile September for hedge funds [FT]
Hedge Funds Post the Best Performance This Year Since 2013 [Bloomberg]