The world's largest hedge fund saw assets decline 15% amid the coronavirus market sell-off

• Ray Dalio's Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world as measured by assets under management, has shrunk 15% amid the coronavirus market sell-off in March and April, Bloomberg first reported.
• Assets at the firm fell to $138 billion at the end of April from $163 billion at the end of February, according to Bridgewater's most recent ADV filing.
• According to a Bloomberg source, almost all of the decline was due to performance-related losses rather than clients pulling their money from the fund.
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Even the world's largest hedge fund couldn't avoid the swift and steep decline in the stock market amid the coronavirus pandemic in March and April.

Bridgewater Associates, founded by Ray Dalio, saw its assets decline by 15% during the market sell-off, according to a filing made by the company and first reported by Bloomberg.

Assets at the firm fell to $138 billion at the end of April from $163 billion at the end of February, but according to a Bloomberg source, that drop was primarily driven by a decline in its funds rather than clients pulling money out of the firm's hedge fund strategies.

In mid-March, Dalio explained in a LinkedIn post that his firm had been positioned to profit from rising markets.

"The novel coronavirus is a pandemic that came and hit us at the worst possible moment because we had a long tilt in our positions," Dalio said.

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While Bloomberg's source said redemptions at the hedge fund have been "modest and consistent with levels from previous periods," one client that did decide to pull funds from the hedge fund was the Virginia Retirement System.

According to a notice, the VRS Investment Department decided to withdraw $178 million from the Bridgewater Pure Alpha II fund at the end of April.

The decline in assets has led Bridgewater to reopen its Pure Alpha Strategy fund to new investors who have been on a waiting list and existing clients who want to add more money to the strategy. One new investor who is allocating funds to Bridgewater is Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge Capital, which told investors that it would allocate $100 million to the hedge fund in May.