How did Scott Bessent stack up as a fund manager?

When people in markets found out that fund manager Scott Bessent was a leading candidate for Treasury Secretary, the natural question to ask was: How good was he?

His fund was Key Square Capital and I searched hard for his returns when his name was floated. I wasn’t able to find them, which is almost always a bad sign (people tend to publish great returns).

One the weekend, Reuters tracked them down and here they are:

• 2016: +13%
• 2017: -7%
• 2018: -1.93%
• 2019: +0.49%
• 2020: -6.52%
• 2021: -8.46%
• 2022: +30.64%

That’s +2.89% annualized in a sizzling bull market.

One of the investors was the New York Pension Fund. Bessent was seeded with $2 billion from Soros but it looks like that money was pulled in time and by 2022 (when he had his best year) he was barely managing any money.

If you take the returns through 2021, they were negative 1.8%, which is relevant given how much money fled in the five year run of negative returns. They’ve continued to flee, though Reuters reported he’s up ‘double digits’ this year thanks to a strong November and made similar ‘double digits’ last year.

Bessent also started a fund in 2000 that closed in 2005, presumably for the same reason.

Now, before I pile on too hard, there is a reason he got $2 billion from Soros. He was a top deputy there was part of the team that bet big against the pound in 1992 (though he would have been very junior at that point) and the yen in 2013 (where he would have been a very big part of it) as he was chief investment officer from 2011 to 2015. Supposedly the returns at Soros in that time were 13%, which is great.

The people who have worked with him universally rave about his knowledge and he certainly bet on the right horse with Trump. The guy climbed the tallest of ladders in both investing and politics, only to land one rung from the top — it seems that’s where he’s most comfortable.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.