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- Greg Coffey, the former star trader at GLG Partners and co-CIO of Moore Capital, is nicknamed the "Wizard of Oz."
- His new fund returned 6.9% year-to-date through the end of May 2019, according to a private database viewed by Business Insider. That beat the average macro fund over the same period.
- Kirkoswald Capital, named after the Australian street Coffey has a house on, launched last year in London and has since moved its trading desk to New York.
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The hedge fund world’s "Wizard of Oz" has gotten off to a promising start in 2019 despite a tough environment for macro managers.
Greg Coffey — the former star trader at GLG Partners and Louis Bacon’s co-CIO at Moore Capital — saw his new fund, Kirkoswald Capital, return 6.9% year-to-date through the end of May, according to a private database viewed by Business Insider.
The average macro fund returned 2.7% over the same period, while the average hedge fund returned 5.3%, according to Hedge Fund Research data.
The fund posted a 1.1% return in May while the average hedge fund fell 1.5%, the data show. Kirkoswald, which focuses on emerging markets, has more than $1 billion in assets.
The firm declined to comment.
Coffey returned to the game in 2018 after taking six years off from investing to spend more time with his family in his native Australia. It was then reported late last year that he was moving his firm’s trading desk from London to New York, partially because of Brexit’s impact on London’s role as a top financial center.
Coffey’s star was made at GLG Partners before the financial crisis as a macro trader, after which he joined Louis Bacon’s Moore Capital in 2008. He ran two emerging-markets funds there, and was a co-CIO of the firm, but failed to replicate the level of his GLG success and retired after four years at the age of 41.
When reports first surfaced that Coffey was coming back to start his own fund, $2 billion was the number floated as the target he was trying to raise. But investors were allegedly wary due to his time off from trading. Billionaire Bacon however supported Coffey both through his fund and personally, according to reports.
Investors have been disinterested in macro funds, despite the solid performance. A recent report from eVestment found that investors pulled $6.2 billion from macro funds in May and $12.1 billion for the year.
See more: Here are the hedge-fund managers to watch in 2019 as the industry battles poor performance
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Source: Business Insider – bsaacks@businessinsider.com (Bradley Saacks)