The competition for macro portfolio managers was scorching hot to end the year, and the trend isn't showing signs of abating in 2023.
Millennium Management recently added another star to its stable, lifting a 32-year-old macro PM out of rival ExodusPoint, according to people familiar with the matter.
John Curtice is set to join Izzy Englander's $58 billion multi-strategy fund following his noncompete period, the people said. Curtice, a 2012 graduate of MIT, had been with Exodus since its launch in the summer of 2018. Before that, he worked three-year stints in global macro at both Mariner Investment Group and Element Capital.
He splits time between Dallas and Tokyo, according to his Linkedin bio.
A representative for Millennium declined to comment.
Former Brevan Howard partner Ben Melkman has also been in talks to join a large multi-strat, according to people familiar with the matter. In 2017, Melkman started his own shop, Light Sky Macro, but decided to wind the $1 billion fund down early last year.
After years of relative quiet, macro strategies at hedge funds surged back to life in 2022 amid rising interest rates, inflation, and geopolitical convulsions. Macro focused funds including BlueCrest, Brevan Howard, and Rokos produced stellar returns as most of the hedge fund industry — especially stock pickers — faltered.
Multi-strategy giants like Citadel and Millennium also outperformed, and such firms have been competing fiercely to secure a larger slice of the macro-trading profits while the market is hot.
Fellow multi-manager ExodusPoint lagged behind peers in performance last year, but macro trading was a highlight. The fund rejiggered its business late in the year, cutting a slew of PMs, primarily in equities, and increasing its exposure to rates and macro, which produced the bulk of the fund's profits in 2022, Insider previously reported.
Hiring is typically quieter at the end of the year, since funds would usually be on the hook to cover a trader's full-year of performance, essentially paying for a rival's profits. But even in late 2022 firms were scrambling to lift out macro PMs, recruiters working in the strategy told Insider.
"If one fund is about to underwrite a PM, three others throw their hat into the ring," Jordan Lange, a partner with hedge fund recruiting firm Carrington Fox, told Insider, referring to a fund's process of making an offer to a PM. "The bids have gotten out of control."
In addition to making a new hire whole on whatever compensation they're forgoing from their existing firm, the hiring fund typically has to guarantee a percentage of the portfolio manager's historic trading performance while they sit out their noncompete period.
Given the intensely competitive environment, that means hedge funds are forking over seven-figure packages in some cases to sign top PMs, according to recruiters and PMs.
The hiring is expected to further accelerate, recruiters told Insider, as bonuses start landing in bank accounts this February and March and traders who stayed put in 2022 weigh the outsized demand for their skills.
Vick Tandon, director of alternative assets recruiting at Tardis Group, said systematic macro strategies are in especially high demand among their clients.
"With all that is going on across the globe sets up for some big Macro-economic moves in markets," Tandon said.
"The demand for good risk takers is always there and with funds coming off a good year, they would like to continue to deploy capital in the space," he added.
