Texas Power Trader e360 Alters Course After Shutting Hedge Fund
(Bloomberg) -- e360 Power is pursuing a more conservative trading strategy after a period of poor performance caused the firm that specializes in US natural gas and power markets to close its flagship hedge fund.
The Austin-based firm shut down e360 Power Fund, LP in December after it was rocked by extreme market volatility exacerbated by US President Donald Trump’s April 2025 tariff announcements, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing non-public information.
It was the second such closure for e360 in less than a decade and leaves the firm running less than $100 million via separately managed accounts, one of the people said.
The firm, which posted huge gains in some years after its 2021 relaunch, was a victim of the increasingly volatile US gas and power markets. Although some hedge funds and commodity trading houses like Vitol and Citadel Energy Marketing have profitably expanded physical gas trading operations, the downfall of the e360 fund illustrates the downside of trying to profit from volatility.
e360 Power declined to comment for this story. The firm managed roughly $400 million as recently as mid-2024.
The firm, which continues to actively trade with less than 10 full-time employees, is now pursuing a lower-volatility strategy that may preclude the sort of double-digit monthly gains recorded earlier in the decade. e360 was up between 8% and 10% for the first five months of this year after raising between $25 million and $50 million in March, one of the people said.
e360’s flagship fund was performing poorly even before Trump’s so-called Liberation Day tariff announcements in April 2025, logging 17.5% losses for the first three months of that year, according to an investor letter seen by Bloomberg. Trump’s decrees on broad-based global tariffs caused huge selloffs across equity and commodity markets, which pulled down gas and electricity prices.
That month was one of the most difficult periods the firm had faced since its inception in 2009 as erratic price moves forced traders to liquidate positions, the person said. Later that year, following additional losses, one of the firm’s two co-founders, James Shrewsbury, departed the firm, leaving the other co-founder Juan Penelas at the helm.
The losses coupled with investor cashouts meant there was not enough money left in the fund to justify fixed expenses, so it was shuttered and the remaining money was refunded in December, the person said.
The losses were a reversal of e360’s extraordinary performance earlier in the decade, when it surged 53% in 2020, 188% in 2021 and 97% in 2022 before slowing to a 5% gain in 2023.
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