The Hedge Fund Traders Dominating a Massive Bet on Bonds
(Bloomberg) — Jonathan Hoffman, John Bonello and Jonathan Tipermas share more than just similar first names. They’re the driving force behind a gigantic wager on government debt that’s been giving regulators sleepless nights.
They and their teams are top players in the “basis trade,” a bet by a few of the world’s biggest hedge funds that profits from the tiny price gaps between Treasuries and derivatives known as futures, people active in the market say. That makes them some of the most important individuals in finance today.
As part of a core group of 10 or so firms, they rely on vast sums of money borrowed from Wall Street banks — often 50 times what they invest themselves — to pump tens of billions of dollars into the trade and supercharge returns. So colossal are their bets that some say they’ve become central to the buying and selling of Treasuries, itself the cornerstone of global capital markets.