Steven Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management just posted its best year since it launched with outside money in 2018 — capping what has been a remarkable professional and personal comeback for the founder of now-defunct SAC Capital Advisors.
Point72 posted a roughly 16 percent net gain in 2020, according to a person who has seen the results. The return means the firm’s founder and New York Mets owner personally made more than $1.4 billion last year, according to calculations by Institutional Investor. This works out to nearly two-thirds of the roughly $2.4 billion Cohen shelled out in September to buy the Mets — and follows personal earnings in 2019 of $1.3 billion.
Cohen did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
Point72 launched in 2014 after regulators forced him to shut down SAC and barred him from managing other people’s money for two years. SAC had been one of the most high-profile hedge funds in the industry, producing eye-popping gains for several years — until regulators charged the firm with insider trading in 2013. Cohen was never individually charged.
Cohen operated Point72 as his personal family office. But after the ban lifted in 2018, he quickly hit the fundraising trail. Last summer Point72 closed its fund to new capital after raising a total of $10 billion since its inception. Firmwide, Point72 manages nearly $19 billion across a number of business lines, including venture capital and systematic investments.
Most of Point72’s gains last year came in the second half; it had gained just 4 percent through June.
Some of its returns come from its allocation to Gabriel Plotkin’s Melvin Capital Management, according to an earlier report from Bloomberg. Melvin had returned 47 percent through November, according to a hedge fund industry professional.
Plotkin is a former trader and consumer stock specialist at Sigma Capital Management, then a division of SAC, where he spent eight years. Launched in 2014, Melvin has emerged as the most successful descendant of SAC.
Point72’s U.S. stock portfolio is well diversified, with the top holdings emphasizing the most popular and top-performing technology and internet stocks, led by Amazon.com, Alibaba Group Holding, Alphabet, Facebook, PayPal, and Microsoft.
Meanwhile, Cohen has quickly won over Mets fans, who are eager to see how he will spend his considerable net worth — estimated at around $14 billion — on free agents.
Now that he has made at least another $1.4 billion from his investment in Point72, expectations will no doubt be even higher.
