Reuters/ Steve Marcus
Daniel Loeb, the founder of Third Point LLC.
Third Point is up 0% through October 31, according to a performance update seen by Business Insider. During October, Third Point gained 4.7%.
The S&P 500 is up 2.7% year-to-date after rising 8.4% in October.
Loeb had gone into August up 5.7% for the year. Like many hedge funds, Third Point faltered during that period of volatility. The fund also suffered losses in September.
In the fund's third-quarter investor letter dated October 30, Loeb wrote that his fund was able to move back into positive territory.
From the Q3 letter:
Despite a difficult quarter for our portfolio, we are optimistic about what we own: a mostly U.S.-centric, concentrated portfolio of event-driven names and structured credit. We understand the macro and market challenges to the overall investment environment. We do not see indicators of a looming U.S. recession and so, while volatility is likely here to stay and multiples may be capped, we are seeing some compelling value opportunities in stocks. The environment for short selling is also attractive and we have more single short names than long positions in our book today. We have reduced our net exposure by nearly a third through sales and new shorts over the past few months while maintaining significant positions in our highest conviction, event-rich names. The conviction to keep and add to our core healthcare names during the selloff enabled us to re-establish ourselves on positive footing this month.
For the most part, 2015 has been an underwhelming year for hedge funds, particularly for the activists.
On average, the activists hedge funds are down 4.01% this year, according to data from Hedge Fund Research. A number of the big names, including Bill Ackman (Pershing Square), David Einhorn (Greenlight Capital), Larry Robbins (Glenview Capital), and others, are deep in the red.