HedgeCo.Net — Kirkoswald, the macro hedge fund firm run by Greg Coffey, had the worst month in its history in October, losing more than 6%, according to a person close to the manager cited by Business Insider. Even after the drawdown, the fund remains up more than 16% for the year, the person said. Hedgeweek, citing Bloomberg, separately reported that Kirkoswald suffered its largest monthly loss on record.
Macro managers had to navigate rising interest rates, war-driven swings in oil prices and an electoral surprise in Brazil during the month, Business Insider reported, while Hedgeweek pointed to crowded technology positioning, political turmoil in Brazil and France and renewed credit concerns as drivers of drawdowns across strategies. The losses spanned the industry: Balyasny fell 3.4% in October and Millennium 2.3%, while Citadel’s Wellington fund gained 1.7% and Quantedge returned 7.2%, according to Hedgeweek.
Macro desks have also seen personnel churn. ExodusPoint saw two portfolio managers leave its Dubai office less than a year after joining and recently cut currency-trading veteran Jim Leitner, a person close to the firm told Business Insider.
The October hit stands out against Coffey’s record. Kirkoswald has become one of the industry’s most closely followed macro franchises since its 2018 launch, and a single month of losses on this scale at a manager still sitting on mid-teens gains for the year is more a stress signal for the macro book than a referendum on the strategy.
For allocators, the key question is whether October reflected a one-off dislocation across rates, oil and emerging markets or the start of a harder regime for discretionary macro, where correlated moves across supposedly independent trades compress the diversification benefit that LPs pay macro managers to provide.