Humans are beating machines, and Pershing Square and Greenlight are crushing it- here's how hedge funds performed in the first half

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• Bill Ackman's Pershing Square, David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital, and $1.4 billion 12 West Capital Management are some of the hedge funds that are flying high so far this year.
• Quants haven't exactly flopped, but they also haven't kept up with several funds making concentrated bets.
• Funds that have struggled include BlueMountain Capital and those making volatility bets.
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The market-beating human stock-picker is far from dead.

Quant funds now dominate hedge fund flows and assets, but the biggest winners midway through 2019 are funds run by old-school investors who take large, concentrated bets.

Systematic strategies haven't exactly flopped, and still attracted significant assets. But stock-pickers like Bill Ackman, David Einhorn, and Gabriel Plotkin turned in a blistering first half, proving the era of the star investor is not completely over.

The average hedge fund returned 7.58% through the first half of the year, according to HFRI. Keep reading to see which funds soared, which ones flopped and which ones were in between.