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Renaissance Clients Pull $4 Billion From Biggest Hedge Fund

 Clients of James Simons’s Renaissance Technologies Corp. withdrew $4 billion from the firm’s largest hedge fund in the past four months after returns trailed peers.Redemptions from the Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund, which declined less than 1 percent last year, trimmed assets to between $21 billion and $22 billion, spokeswoman Marcia Horowitz said today in an e-mail. The average stock hedge fund gained 10.4 percent in 2007, according to data compiled by Hedge Fund Research Inc. of Chicago.

The East Setauket, New York-based firm, like other quantitative fund managers, lost money when the computer models it uses to select trades were confounded by volatile stock markets caused by the collapse of subprime mortgages. Stock volatility, as measured by the Chicago Board Options Exchange SPX Volatility Index, almost doubled last year to the highest since early 2003.

When Simons started the equity fund in 2005, he said it could handle as much as $100 billion. Last year, the firm limited inflows to $1.5 billion a month. The recent withdrawals were reported earlier today by Reuters

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