SAC Capital Advisors LLC

SAC Capital Advisors is a group of hedge funds founded by Steven A. Cohen. SAC Capital Advisors normally closely guards its returns. However, published reports and people who have seen the SAC Capital Advisors' letters to its investors say that SAC Capital Advisors had a gross return, before its fees, of at least 40 percent in every year from 1996 to 2001, making it astoundingly successful. While most hedge funds charge a fee of 20% to 30% percent of the annual returns, SAC Capital Advisors keeps 50% percent.

According to Business Week magazine, SAC Capital Advisors routinely accounts for as much as 3% of the New York Stock Exchange's average daily trading, plus up to 1% of the NASDAQ's – a total of at least 20 million shares a day.

At the heart of SAC Capital Advisors are 40 "portfolios." Each has between one and 15 traders and analysts who execute various strategies. The primary focus is a long-short equity strategy, but later SAC Capital Advisors has branched out into convertible and statistical arbitrage, quantitative strategies, and big bets on interest rates. Investors' money is channeled through seven different "portfolio companies" or funds -- including a core fund, a global diversified fund, and a health-care fund, each with an offshore counterpart. One fund, Sigma, consists mainly of Steven A Cohen's personal money, say insiders.

Cohen and his business partners are the biggest investors in SAC Capital Advisors, comprising some 60% of its assets. The remaining investors are typically other big-money, largely anonymous Wall Streeters.