‘More Complex’
Sol Kumin, a former lieutenant of Cohen’s who started trading in his Folger Hill Asset Management last year, lost 3 percent in 2015 and another 2 percent in January, highlighting the challenges facing startups.
“One of the really difficult things is finding high-quality talent,” said Don Steinbrugge, managing partner of Agecroft Partners in Richmond, Virginia, which helps hedge funds raise money. In addition, firms have to ensure they compensate people adequately so they don’t walk out the door, and they must build a hefty infrastructure, including risk management, because they are dealing with a lot of different portfolios, often across strategies.
“It’s a lot more complex than a standard fund,” Steinbrugge said.
Our Methodology
Bloomberg’s rankings of the top-performing hedge funds are based on funds’ net returns for 2015. Because hedge fund returns can be difficult to obtain, our lists are not all-inclusive. In addition, some of the numbers were difficult to verify. Unless the information came from Bloomberg data or the hedge-fund firm itself, we tried to verify it with other sources, including investors and other fund databases. All returns are for full- year 2015; fund assets are the latest available. Onshore and offshore assets were combined for a number of funds, while figures for other funds were only for the larger or better- performing class of the fund.