(Bloomberg) - Melvin Capital Management, after raising almost $6 billion last year, just booked another January of steep losses.
Gabe Plotkin’s hedge fund tumbled 15% last month, according to a person familiar with the matter, compared with a 9% drop for the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index and 5.3% decline for the S&P 500.
The first month of last year was even worse. The fund plunged almost 55%, erasing roughly $7 billion of capital, as short wagers on meme stocks such as GameStop Corp. turned sour.
Even after gaining about 33% in the months that followed, Plotkin was still down 39.3% for the year. He now needs to gain about 94% to break even.
Melvin pulled in $3.2 billion of fresh capital later in the year, according to filings, after raising $2.75 billion in January from investors including Ken Griffin’s Citadel and Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month’s returns earlier Wednesday.
By Katherine Burton and Miles Weiss
