Hedge Funds Levered Up in 2019

Millennium, AQR, and Bridgewater top the list.

Israel Englander, founder of Millennium Management. (Ronda Churchill/Bloomberg)

Israel Englander, founder of Millennium Management.

(Ronda Churchill/Bloomberg)

Many of the biggest U.S. hedge fund managers, most of them running quantitative or relative-value strategies, boosted or kept steady their leverage in 2019 — just before a massive selloff in the markets last month.

An analysis of the latest ADV filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that regulatory assets under management — a term that includes gross leverage, or borrowed funds to juice returns — jumped last year for a number of firms.

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