Unstructured Finance

By Matthew Goldstein

Move over Steve Cohen. The trader who is killing it at Cohen’s $14 billion SAC Capital Advisors this year is Gabriel Plotkin.

The portfolio manager, who specializes in consumer products and the gaming and lodging industry, is one of the top producers this year at Cohen’s hedge fund, say several people familiar with the Stamford, Conn. hedge fund. Plotkin, who joined SAC Capital in late 2006 from North Sound Capital, is emerging as on Cohen’s most reliable money men.

At SAC Capital, where most portfolio managers run books that range from as little as $250 million to $500 million, Plotkin manages one of the largest. His team of half-dozen traders and analysts manages about $1.2 billion of the firm’s money, say sources.

And this year, Plotkin has delivered, producing a return of about $150 million from his trades.

In October, Plotkin was a featured panelist at a Wharton Investment Management Conference along with Adam Cohen of Caspian Capital, BlackRock’s Rick Rieder and Michael Karsch of Karsch Capital. Plotkin works with SAC Capital’s Sigma Capital division.

By Matthew Goldstein

If numbers told the entire story, one might conclude that hedge fund manager David Einhorn took the month of May off.

That’s because Einhorn flagship fund at his Greenlight Capital registered a big nothing for the month. In other words, Greenlight’s flagship fund registered a zero percent gain/loss, according to my colleague Svea Herbst-Bayliss.

Of course, May was a very big busy month for Einhorn. At the annual Ira Sohn charitable event, Einhorn unleashed a blistering attack on Steve Ballmer, in which the 42-year-old hedgie called for the ouster of the Microsoft chief executive officer. Then, the very next day, Einhorn announced he had reached a deal with New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon to buy a minority stake in the Major League Baseball team for $200 million.