(Bloomberg) -- John Curtice, one of Millennium Management’s most expensive recent hires, has departed within a year of joining Izzy Englander’s hedge fund firm.
Curtice, who joined earlier this year from rival ExodusPoint Capital Management, exceeded Millennium’s guidance on his risk limits, according to people with knowledge of the matter. This led to the firm discussing the matter with Curtice on several occasions, the people said.
Millennium also recently cut Curtice’s trading capital to $1.5 billion from $2 billion as his performance slipped from his peak gains, said the people, asking not to be identified because the details weren’t public. Curtice had a net low-single-digit loss since joining the firm, though his trades didn’t hit levels that would trigger a stop-loss, the people added.
Curtice and a representative for Millennium declined to comment.
Multistrategy hedge funds such as Millennium are known for their focus on market-neutral trading strategies to achieve a steady stream of returns. Unlike some hedge funds that build reputations on a single star trader, multistrats hire teams of high-performers and chain them to fixed rules and strict risk limits to avoid disasters. This rigid approach has cost many traders their jobs.
Curtice was one of the top performing money managers at ExodusPoint, having generated hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for the hedge fund over more than four years. To tempt him away, Millennium promised potential payouts in excess of $50 million, Bloomberg has previously reported.
Traders with a history of running sizable pools of capital are in high demand to manage the glut of capital that’s flowed into multistrategy firms. Still, Curtice’s short stint at one of the industry’s giants shows the challenge they face in a volatile market.
Millennium manages $70.2 billion with more than 330 teams trading globally, according to its website.
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