Melvin Capital, the hedge fund hit with billions of losses in the 2021 meme-stock frenzy, has called it quits and will return investors' money, according to media reports on Thursday. Here's a brief look a the hedge fund's history.
2014: Melvin Capital is founded in 2014 by Gabriel Plotkin, who had previously worked at Ken Griffin's Citadel LLC and Steve Cohen's SAC Capital, and named the firm after his grandfather. He raised almost $1B to start the fund.
2015: The hedge fund posted a return of 46% in its first full year of operation, putting it second on Bloomberg's 2015 list of top-performing funds with $1B or more under management.
2015: For the full-year 2015, most of its 67% of returns (before fees) came from its short positions, including bets against JC Penney and SunEdison, both of which eventually went bankrupt.
2017: The Wall Street Journal reported that about a third of the gains in 2019 from Steve Cohen's Point72 hedge fund came from Melvin.
January 2021: Hedge funds Citadel LLC and Point72
invested $2.75B into Melvin to help stabilize the fund after its short positions, including against
$GameStop (GME.US)$ , contributed to losses of 30% through Jan. 22.
January 31, 2021: Melvin
lost 53% in January when its short positions on stocks like GameStop soured. Other stocks that rallied, when Plotkin expected them to fall, included Bed Bath & Beyond (
$Bed Bath & Beyond Inc (BBBY.US)$ ), GSX Techedu (GSX), and National Beverage (
$National Beverage (FIZZ.US)$ ).
December 2021: The firm ends the year down 39%.
April 2022: After the fund falls 21% in Q1 2022, the firm considers
shutting down and starting a new fund with money that Melvin investors decide to reinvest.
May 16, 2022: Melvin
doubles its stake in Amazon (
$Amazon (AMZN.US)$ ) and reduced its stake in Live Nation Entertainment (
$Live Nation Entertainment (LYV.US)$ ), according to its 13F filing. Total holdings had a portfolio value of $9.86B at March 31, 2022.
May 19, 2022: Melvin is said to wind down after its plan for a new fund gets
negative feedback from investors.