Nick Maounis' $2 billion Verition Fund Management is up more than 22% — outperforming other multi-strategy hedge funds like Citadel and Millennium

Nick Maounis' Verition Fund Management has surged this year despite the pandemic, ongoing market volatility and the US election.

Sources tell Business Insider that the Greenwich-based multi-strategy hedge fund is up 22.3% for the year through October, after gaining 1.5% last month. 

The performance so far puts the firm near the top of the multi-strategy category in the industry, besting some better-known peers, according to performance numbers from a recent Institutional Investor article. Verition's 22.3% is better than billionaire Ken Griffin's Citadel and billionaire Izzy Englander's Millennium, which have returned 20.1% and 15.9% respectively.  

Balyasny leads the way for multi-strategy managers with returns of roughly 25% for the year. The Chicago-based fund was one of the few firms that made money during the initial market volatility caused by the pandemic in March. In an April letter to investors— after a first-quarter return of 4.75% — Dmitry Balyasny told investors that the firm was "increasing our trading oriented macro strategies across rates, FX, and equities."

Large multi-strategy firms have been able to outperform throughout the year and avoid some of the troubles that quants and structured credit managers have run into. Hedge funds as a whole have trailed the stock market's performance this year, with Hedge Fund Research's global hedge fund index up a little over 1% for the year. 

See more: How $6 billion Balyasny trounced most hedge funds in the first quarter — and where it's focusing next after losing a top macro investor

Verition — which has $2 billion in assets and is run by Maounis and the firm's president Josh Goldstein — declined to comment. The firm runs five strategies — equity, credit, quant, event-driven, and convertible arbitrage — that are all positive, individually, for the year. 

Maounis is best known for his previous hedge fund, Amaranth Advisors, which closed in 2006 after a natural-gas trader lost billions in a trade gone wrong. He then started Verition in 2008, and has had success, with the firm's flagship fund averaging roughly 13% annual returns since its launch, according to a source familiar with the figures. 

SEE ALSO: Billionaire Ken Griffin's Citadel just turned 30. Read the anniversary note he sent staff on going from a 22-year-old 'entrepreneur' to running a $35 billion hedge-fund firm.

SEE ALSO: Stock-picking billionaires like Bill Ackman and Lee Ainslie are soaring while quants like Renaissance and Winton struggle. Here's a breakdown of how 13 hedge funds are performing.

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