Rokos Capital Management the London-based hedge fund that’s in the process of raising another $2bn, is on a roll.
The Financial Times today reports that Rokos, which employs less than 200 people in the UK according to its most recently filed report, has made profits of $1bn year to date by virtue of a successful bet that rates won’t fall as fast as expected.
As the money rolls in, Rokos is hiring, and it’s doing so at a senior level. As we reported in January, Rokos added Morgan Stanley managing director Shubham Singal as a partner and co-chief risk officer, based in London. In December, it hired Quita Ramirez from Schonfeld, also as a partner and head of business development and investor relations, based in New York. So far this year, it’s also inserted Jaymie Sullivan as an equities investment officer and Kamil Belkhayat as volatility trader, both from Citadel, both in the US.
Unlike the likes of Citadel and Millennium, Rokos is a single manager-focused hedge fund built around the trading icon that is Chris Rokos, the Etonian ex-Goldman Sachs, ex-Brevan Howard trader who started the fund in 2015.
Rokos himself is a macro trader, but Rokos Capital Management has portfolio managers trading equities, commodities, credit and securitized products. Bloomberg says 2022 and 2023 were good years for the firm too: returns hit 51% in 2022 and 8.8% in 2023; in 2021, however, they were -21%. The FT describes Rokos’ bets as “punchy;” one hedge fund headhunter say they’re “volatile.” “He takes big bets and big positions and they’re up and down like a yo-yo.”
Given that Rokos isn’t the average “pod shop”, this has implications for pay. In March last year, the 25 or so partners at the firm had £445m in profits to share between them. In March 2022, there was no profit but a shared £3.6m loss.
Rokos created three new partners last year: Pria Bakhshi (global head of strategic solutions) Julian Callow (head of thematic research) and Lauren Ellison (macro investment officer). All were working for the fund already.
Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash
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