Walleye Capital, the multi-strategy hedge fund managing about 17 billion dollars, plans to return about 2 billion dollars to clients as it cuts back its equities trading business, Bloomberg reported on November 6. The decision follows a loss of 5.9 percent in October, the firm’s worst month since March 2020, which took its 2026 loss to 6.8 percent, according to people familiar with the matter.
In a letter to investors sent on Thursday, chief investment officer Will England said the firm is simplifying its internal equity long-short business, parting ways with its long-short leadership and a substantial portion of its internal long-short investment teams. Anil Gondi, the head of equities hired from Balyasny in 2025, has been let go. England wrote that the internal equity effort had not produced the results expected and that its opportunity cost and resource consumption had been too high relative to the return, and that the firm’s competitive advantage is not in replicating the traditional multi-manager equity long-short model.
Walleye is not leaving equity investing. It will keep allocating to external long-short managers, as it has for more than a decade, and will lean into the businesses where it claims a differentiated edge: volatility, quantitative strategies and external allocations. Its volatility business, England wrote, had its strongest month on record in October.
The firm told investors it had evaluated the optimal size of the fund and plans to return a portion of its capital, with the amount, timing and mechanics to follow. The roughly 2 billion dollar figure is Bloomberg’s reporting of the planned return. The move caps a rapid expansion: Walleye stopped taking new investor money in July 2025 at a little over 8 billion dollars under management, and now manages more than 17 billion.