Three weeks ago, when Bloomberg pointed out that Andurand was the best performing hedge fund in March thanks to its notorious levered long oil positioning (and really nothing else), we said they may want to refresh his exposure after the April 7 oil crash.
Three weeks later, they did: according to a report published this morning, Pierre Andurand’s largest "hedge fund" (and when it comes to Andurand, the word "hedging" is a catastrophic misnomer), plunged about 52% in the first half of April, wiping out all of its first quarter gains and then some made on bullish oil bets at the start of the Iran war.
His fund slumped this month through April 17 and is now down almost 37% for the year despite oil being substantially higher YTD. It comes after the Andurand Commodities Discretionary Enhanced fund delivered a 31% gain in March even as other hedge funds were caught off guard by the huge swings in commodities prices and inflation expectations unleashed by the war. Perhaps in the parallel universe inhabited by the ultra liberal trader, oil can somehow magically rise to infinity without demand destruction. Well... no.
The fund - which is basically a 5x levered bet on oil, and which refuses to ever consider the possibility its manager is wrong - has no set risk limits and regularly delivers both double digit gains and losses... though in fairness it has been more losses than gains.
Oil prices posted a record monthly rally in March, driving the firm’s gains, as war between the US and Iran throttled exports from the Persian Gulf and triggered the most severe supply disruption in history. Brent futures, an international benchmark, climbed to almost $120 a barrel on March 9. Yet instead of taking profits on the way down, Andurand appears to have doubled and tripled down. And that's how he wiped out more than half of his fund's AUM in 2 weeks.
It begs the question: which foolish prime broker generously gave Andurand the insane leverage to lose such a staggering amount of money in just two weeks?
Unlike Andurand, the Iranian chaos has been lucrative for oil trading houses that buy and sell physical cargoes of crude, driving outsize profits at firms including Vitol Group, Trafigura Group and Gunvor Group.
For Andurand, the setback in March was a reminder of how volatile commodity markets can be. The fund lost about 40% last year after making a 50% gain the previous year. Yet with the 37% drop in 2026, it is pretty clear that not a single investor in Andurand's hedge fund is even remotely close to ever breaking even on their catastrophic investment.