SAC Capital – Too Much Of A Good Thing

SAC Capital – Too Much Of A Good Thing Courtesy of The Banker I covered the mortgage bond side of SAC Capital in the early 2000s, and I remember half-kidding, half-probing my client about Steven A Cohen’s seeming inability to miss. Back then Cohen’s SAC had put together a string of annual monster returns like no other hedge fund.[1]  Cohen’s SAC Capital was the Mark McGuire of stock trading, and we knew enough to think the home run records of 1998 looked mighty suspicious. My client was one of the nicest and most straight-forward men I ever worked with, and his team of bond portfolio managers were really not the beating heart of SAC’s fund, which at its core was a high volume, stock-trading firm. My client honorably defended his employer Cohen, marveling at his ability to stand in the middle of his trading floor in Stamford, CT and synthesize all the trading inputs...