A 37-year old hedge fund manager had a monster first year running his $1.5 billion fund

Former SAC Capital star portfolio manager Gabe Plotkin had a monster first year running his own hedge fund.

Melvin Capital, a $1.5 billion long/short equity hedge fund, finished 2015 up an impressive 47%, according to Bloomberg News' ranking of top-performing hedge funds with $1 billion or more in assets under management.

Those returns place Melvin Capital as the No. 2 fund for 2015, the Bloomberg ranking shows.

The average hedge fund fell around 3.64% in 2015, according to data from Hedge Fund Research.

Melvin Capital's largest long positions included McDonald's, Dollar Tree, Domino's Pizza, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Signet Jewelers, Constellation Brands, Lowe's, Advance Autoparts, Facebook, Visa and Amazon, according to the most recent 13F data for the fourth quarter ended December 31.

The fund is off to a strong start in 2016, gaining 2.9% in January, Bloomberg's Simone Foxman reported. The average fund fell 2.76% in January, HFR's data shows.

Plotkin, 37, worked as a portfolio manager at Sigma Capital, a subsidiary of Steve Cohen's SAC Capital (now family-office Point72 Asset Management), from 2006 until April 2014. There, he ran a $1.3 billion portfolio focused on consumer product stocks, according to a report in the New York Times.

He officially launched Melvin Capital, named after his late grandfather, in September 2014.

His former boss, Steve Cohen, reportedly agreed to invest up to $200 million with Plotkin.

Cohen also had a strong year in 2015, with Point72 ending up 15.5%.