Whitney’s Renown

Hedge funds, on average, returned about 2 percent during the year’s first 11 months, their worst performance since 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Smaller funds have struggled to grow as institutional investors flocked to the biggest players.

Whitney, 45, gained Wall Street renown during the financial crisis for correctly predicting Citigroup Inc.’s dividend cut. She wrongly predicted hundreds of billions of dollars of municipal-bond defaults on a December 2010 episode of CBS Corp.’s “60 Minutes,” later telling Bloomberg News it had been “a guesstimate” involving “fifth-derivative dimensions.”

Aiming for returns of 12 percent to 17 percent, her fund sought to profit from growth in what she called “America’s Heartland,” according to the fund presentation.

Whitney won’t opine on things that she doesn’t have “a high conviction level on,” she told Bloomberg Businessweek last year. “The financial system is a faith-based system. And I’m very careful about preserving the equilibrium.”

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