Balyasny; Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images;Phil McCarten/Reuters
- Hedge funds such as Millennium and Citadel were up in the first quarter of 2026.
- Meanwhile, managers, including Balyasny and LMR, lost money thanks to rocky market conditions.
- Most funds have outperformed the S&P 500, which lost 4.6% in the first quarter.
For the second year in a row, March wasn't pretty for many big-name hedge funds.
Losses spread across the multistrategy space over the month. Dmitry Balyasny's eponymous manager was down 4.3% on the month, and the $33 billion firm is now down 3.8% for the year, a person close to the firm told Business Insider.
Michael Gelband's ExodusPoint, which is more fixed-income-focused than its peers, lost 4.5% in March, while London-based hedge fund LMR Partners lost 2.4% in its multistrategy fund.
The industry's biggest players fared slightly better, but still posted losses. Ken Griffin's Citadel was down 1.9% last month in its flagship Wellington fund, and Izzy Englander's Millennium fell 1.2% last month, but both still ended the first quarter in the black.
Some firms were able to mitigate the damage.
Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, now $19 billion in total assets, was flat in March and is up 0.9% for the year, a person close to the New York-based manager told Business Insider. Steve Cohen's Point72 was down less than 1% in March and finished the quarter up nearly 4%.
It's been a chaotic start to the year for hedge funds and others trading global markets, thanks again to President Donald Trump and his administration.
In 2025, following his inauguration, Trump sent markets reeling with widespread tariffs that upended global trade and stung big-name funds. This year, it's been the strikes on Iran by American and Israeli forces that have global economies in turmoil and investment managers in the red.
For example, many macro funds were hurt in March thanks to a bet that short-term interest rates in the UK and Europe would fall soon. With inflation expected to rise due to higher energy prices stemming from the conflict in the Middle East, this trade backfired on many seasoned investors.
Earlier in the first quarter, there was also a significant sell-off of software stocks, driven by the perceived advances of artificial intelligence tools from hot start-ups like Anthropic. Investor uneasiness and shaky geopolitics led to the worst quarter for the S&P 500 since 2022, with the index down 4.6%.
Multistrategy funds spread the money they manage across a variety of investment teams running diverse strategies with the goal of delivering consistent returns regardless of the market environment.
This subset has dominated industry chatter in recent years, thanks to eye-popping compensation figures given out to top traders by funds managing more capital than ever before.
The firms mentioned declined to comment.
This story was originally published on April 1 at 1:18 p.m. New figures have been added to the table below as they have been learned.
| Fund | March performance | 2026 performance |
| Dymon Asia | -4.3% | 6% |
| Pinpoint Asset Management | -2.5% | 4% |
| Point72 | -0.7% | 3.8% |
| North Rock | -0.7% | 2.1% |
| Millennium | -1.2% | 1% |
| Citadel Wellington | -1.9% | 1% |
| Schonfeld Partners | 0% | 0.9% |
| LMR | -2.4% | -0.3% |
| Verition | -1.9% | -0.4% |
| ExodusPoint | -4.5% | -2% |
| Walleye | -1.3% | -2.6% |
| Balyasny | -4.3% | -3.8% |
Read the original article on Business Insider
