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R.G. Niederhoffer Capital Management
$200 Million
Roy Niederhoffer joins the ranks of the best-paid managers this year by stepping out of the shadow of his much older and more famous brother, Victor, a commodities trading pioneer and onetime partner of George Soros.
The younger Niederhoffer, 44, has a degree from Harvard University in a rare but perhaps useful area of expertise for a hedge fund manager: computational neuroscience, the study of how the human brain processes information. He has real-world experience too. He spent five years working at NCZ Commodities, the commodity trading advisor run by his brother, who is 22 years older, before starting his own managed-futures firm, New York–based R.G.
Niederhoffer Capital Management. Since 1993 its Diversified Offshore fund has compounded at roughly 11.6 percent a year. In 2008 it surged by 51 percent, while its companion Negative Correlation fund jumped 54 percent, bringing Niederhoffer’s assets under management to $2 billion.
Niederhoffer, an accomplished pianist, likens his firm to a miniature version of quant shop Renaissance Technologies Corp. He is a high-frequency trader, sometimes holding a position for only a few minutes, and typically invests in equities, fixed income, foreign exchange and commodities. Last year he did especially well betting on equity index options as well as going long or short on individual stocks.
