While most of the hedge-fund industry’s attention is on the expanding multi-strategy space, big-name quants have largely outperformed their more human-driven rivals.
According to people familiar with their returns, D.E. Shaw, Renaissance Technologies, and Two Sigma had strong second-quarter closes, bringing year-to-date returns in some funds above those of firms like Citadel and Millennium.
D.E. Shaw’s Valence fund — the firm’s statistical arbitrage fund — is up 12.3% through 2024’s first half, a person close to the $60 billion manager said. In June, the fund was up 3%, this person added.
Renaissance’s largest fund available to investors, Institutional Equities, is up 11.4% through the first half of 2024 thanks to a 3.7% gain in June, a person close to the Long Island-based manager told Business Insider. The firm’s smaller Institutional Diversified Alpha offering is up 9.7% for the year after a 4.3% bump in June.
At New York-based Two Sigma, the firm’s Absolute Return Enhanced fund was up 10.6% in 2024’s first half after a 4% gain in June, a person close to the firm said. The flagship Spectrum fund, meanwhile, is up 6.1% this year after a 2% June gain.
Capital Fund Management, the $15.3 billion French quant manager expanding in the US, is also up this year, with an 8.7% gain in its flagship Stratus fund and a 5.9% return in its smaller Discus fund.
These managers are outpacing the average fund, which is up roughly 5%, according to Hedge Fund Research, though trailing the S&P 500, which made close to 15% through the first six months of 2024.
At London-based Marshall Wace, the $67.3 billion firm’s Alpha Plus fund is trailing rivals, with a 4.1% gain in the first half, but had a strong June, with a 3.5% gain, a person close to the firm said. The strategy manages $3.5 billion.
The firms mentioned declined to comment.