The under-the-radar hedge funds that killed it in 2024
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- Big-name managers mostly performed well in 2024, but some under-the-radar players soared.
- Managers like Glen Kacher's Light Street and David Rogers' Castle Hook returned 60% last year.
- Jason Mudrick's firm returned more than 31%, a person close to the manager said.
The biggest hedge funds in the world — names like Citadel, D. E. Shaw, and Millennium — had good years in 2024, as Business Insider has reported.
While most of these funds failed to match the S&P 500's 23% gain, their investors love their consistency and risk management.
But allocators also need managers who can make big bets and rip past peers and the market in a good year, as seen in the growth and interest in Chris Rokos' eponymous fund.
BI identified a few hedge funds that have been around but are not as recognizable as their industry subsector peers — though that might change after their impressive performance.
Big-name macro funds, for example, had strong years thanks to geopolitical events like the US election, which many were able to capitalize on. Rokos, PointState, and Rob Citrone's Discovery Capital Management all recorded large gains — but none of these bigger names matched the 60% gain by David Rogers' Castle Hook.
Rogers, a former investor in George Soros' family office, launched Castle Hook in 2016 with his fellow Soros alum Joshua Donfeld with capital from the billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller. The manager now runs $4.4 billion, a person close to the firm said.
Light Street Capital, a Tiger Cub run out of California by Glen Kacher, is smaller and less well known than other firms linked to Tiger Management's late Julian Robertson, such as Tiger Global, Coatue, and Viking Global. But Light Street's 59.4% gain last year and Kacher's focus on artificial intelligence are sure to draw attention.
Kacher said on X that his "AI5 basket" outperformed the Magnificent Seven last year. There's some overlap between the two groups of stocks, specifically Nvidia and Microsoft, but the other holdings in his basket are semiconductor and AI-infrastructure companies such as Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom.
Meanwhile, when stocks are soaring, there's often a lack of interest in credit managers, especially those playing in the distressed space. But Jason Mudrick's $4 billion firm managed to pull out a market-beating year, a person close to the firm told BI.
The person said Mudrick Capital made 31.7% for the year and ended 2024 by investing up to $50 million in the flailing British flying-taxi startup Vertical Aerospace to bail the company out.
By comparison, the average credit fund, according to Hedge Fund Research, returned less than 10% through November.