July Hedge Fund Performance: Citadel, Schonfeld, and Marshall Wace

July was another rocky month for multistrategy hedge funds, despite equity markets ticking up.

One of the industry’s biggest names handled the chopiness well, though.

Ken Griffin’s Citadel gained 1.3% in July in its flagship Wellington fund, people close to the manager said. The Miami-based hedge fund giant, which posted rare losses in February and March, is now up 4% for the year.

The S&P 500 returned 2.2% in July, as markets wrapped up a turbulent-but-resilient month buoyed by strong corporate earnings and optimistic retail investors.

Managers with large quant teams faced a challenging stretch, however. A weekslong drawdown in bread-and-butter systematic strategies stung hedge funds, though a Morgan Stanley note from the end of last week stated that a strong end to July helped quants recover 30% of their losses from the month.

Unlike pure-play quant funds like Renaissance Technologies or Qube Research & Technologies, multistrategy funds are often able to ride out difficult markets thanks to their diversification. For example, $14 billion Schonfeld, which is known for its strong quant teams, was down 0.3% last month in its flagship fund, less than many rivals that only manage computer-run funds are believed to have experienced.

A fund that only includes Schonfeld’s fundamental equity teams was up 1.4% last month, a person close to the manager said, helping mitigate losses in quant and other strategies.

Related stories

At Griffin’s firm, stockpickers led the way. The manager was up 2.1% in July in its Tactical Trading fund, which blends human stockpickers and quant strategies, and 3.1% in its Global Equities fund. The strategies are up 8.3% and 6.3% for the year, respectively, the person said.

The managers declined to comment. Additional performance figures will be added once confirmed.