Roy Niederhoffer has been a hedge fund manager for almost 20 years — but the nerdy investor is probably just as well known in Manhattan social circles for his love of music.
A patron of the arts and an accomplished musician, the 46-year-old investor is scheduled to play violin next Saturday with the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony.
He might want to buff up his musical resumé — the hedge fund he is running hasn't made a dime since 2008 when it had a spectacular 51 percent gain.
Since then, roughly $1.1 billion has been lost to poor investments.
The firm now has only $484 million, according to a recent report to investors.
Hitting sour notes: Maybe society fixture Roy Niederhoffer, shown here playing violin with The Harmony Program, should paymore attention to his hedge fund, which has lost money four straight years.
"It seems so dire," sniffed one institutional hedge fund investor who knows the fund. "It's hard to say it's just not broken at this point."
It's hard to argue the point.
While many other hedge funds are hurting this year, Niederhoffer's four-year losing streak is apparently unmatched by other funds of its size and strategy.
Since 2009, Niederhoffer's biggest fund has lost a cumulative 60 percent, a third of it this year.
It's quite a turnaround from 2008 when Niederhoffer seemed certain to be stepping away from the fractured reputation of his older brother, Victor — who famously blew up two hedge funds, most recently in 2007.
In that magical 2008, Roy had become a star — and everyone was curious about his strategy.
Niederhoffer attributed the profits to what he calls "computational neuroscience" — a black box formula he claimed allowed him to successfully predict the direction of markets based on the level of investor fear or greed.
Well, it doesn't seem to have worked since then.
After four years in the red, R.G.Niederhoffer has lost about 70 percent of its assets, The Post has learned.
Roy Niederhoffer did not return a call for comment.
Niederhoffer's fund, which belongs in a group of funds called "managed futures" funds, uses algorithms and models to follow long-term trends and invest in everything from stocks and bonds to currencies and interest rates.
But managed futures funds are highly leveraged and volatile.
Managed funds in general aren't doing well, and Niederhoffer's fund has done worse than most this year, according to the Absolute Return Managed Futures Index, which is up 0.3 percent through September of this year.
Niederhoffer's biggest fund had lost more than 20 percent by that time.
Some experts say that the "computational neuroscience" he claims to employ may be little more than a marketing gimmick.
"While neurological studies have tried to identify components responsible for fear and greed, the impact on finance is less clear," says Andrew Lo, a professor of finance at MIT who also runs a hedge fund.
It certainly hasn't helped Niederhoffer sniff out fear, says a former investor. "You couldn't have more fear in the markets than in the past four years."
mcelarier@nypost.com
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