Hedge fund managers Barry Rosenstein and David Einhorn, like many other investors, were hurt by last month's late but sharp stock market selloff and are reporting losses for July, investors who saw their performance numbers said.
_0">Rosenstein's Jana Partners funds lost 1.3 percent in July while his Jana Nirvana fund lost 1.7 percent. Meanwhile, David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital fell 2.9 percent last month.
For the year, however, all those funds are still in the black. Rosenstein's Nirvana fund is up 6.2 percent, beating the S&P 500's 5.7 percent rise while his Partners fund is up 4.0 percent. Einhorn's Greenlight Capital is up 3.6 percent.
Rosenstein and Einhorn rank among the world's biggest and most successful hedge fund managers, so their monthly numbers are closely followed by investors, keen to gauge the health of the broader hedge fund industry.
On the last day of July, the U.S. Dow Jones industrial average lost 317 points to register its sharpest one-day drop since February on growing worries that stronger U.S. economic data might prompt the Federal Reserve to end its easy money policies sooner than anticipated. At the same time, bubbling geopolitical worries also weighed on markets.
Several prominent hedge fund managers, including Einhorn, Paul Singer and Leon Cooperman, have been saying lately in letters to investors and at a public conference that the stock market may be overvalued and poised for a selloff.
Many hedge fund managers are still compiling their month-end statistics but these are generally not released to the public. The average hedge fund rose 1.35 percent year-to-date through the end of July, according to Hedge Fund Research, which receives updates from a small number of funds on a weekly basis.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Nick Zieminski)