Billionaire fund manager Steve Cohen: My 'worst fears were realized' in February

Advertisement

steve cohen

REUTERS/Steve Marcus

There are more hedge funds today than there have ever been in history, says billionaire Steve Cohen, and it's bringing about one of his worst fears.

Advertisement

"One of my biggest worries is that there are so many players out there trying to do the same strategies... if one big one goes down will we take collateral damage," Cohen said at the Milken Global Conference in Los Angeles on Monday.

"We were down 8% in February and for us that's a lot... my worst fears were realized."

Cohen is the founder of Point 72, a family office formerly known as hedge fund SAC Capital. He was speaking at a panel with AQR Capital's Cliff Asness and Neil Chriss of Hutchin Hill Capital.

Cohen's fear is one unique to the evolution of the hedge fund industry because of its explosive growth over the last decade-plus.

Advertisement

It's about differentiation - or rather the lack of it.

In February, the market was going absolutely nuts. Everyone thought the end of days were near as China tailspinned, dragging the rest of global stock markets with it, and commodities prices were at historic lows. It happened so suddenly, that at that point the question for big investors with their money parked here and there was not 'how much money can we make?' as much as it was 'how much can we not lose?'

And since there was a lot of hedge fund money parked everywhere, the losses were maginfied. As big investors sloshed their money around in these volatile waters, some hedge funds got wiped out in the volatility.

"It happened in four days," Cohen added later, "and the markets were going up at that time."

More hedge funds than Taco Bells

There are reasons why hedge funds can clobber each other with size now, aside from the fact that too many of them are doing the same thing.

Advertisement

As Chriss pointed out during the panel, the hedge fund industry used to be worth a couple $100 million. Today, the industry is worth $3 trillion. And, according to Cohen, every player in the industry thinks they have to be big to survive.

To Cohen, Asness, and Chriss, it feels like a day of reckoning is coming. It was all they could talk about.

Since the financial crisis, the stock market has had a wonderful run, while hedge funds overall have not outperformed the indices that they are compared against. Investors are getting annoyed. But Asness had an answer for that.

"Our criticism of hedge funds is that they're not hedged enough... They're not supposed to beat the market in a bull market," said Asness. "The comparison against all stocks makes you look really good when the stock market goes down and bad when it goes up, and its hurt them in the last 6-7 years"

For his part, Asness thinks things are about to get better for hedge funds.

Advertisement

"I expect better than the last 3-5 years but lower than history," Asness said.

Hedge fund performance isn't the only problem. Even though there are more hedge funds around today, Cohen says there isn't enough talent. He only hires 3%-4% of the people who apply to join his firm.

"I'm blown away by the lack of talent," said Cohen.

NOW WATCH: Here are some incredible toys hedge fund boss Steve Cohen has bought with his billions