Hedge fund managers say rising stars under 40 list is "all wrong"

Next time you see a "40 under 40" list purporting to show the top young talent in the financial services industry, you might want to question its validity. Following our piece earlier this month on Fortune's 40 under 40 assemblage, various people have been in touch to point out the list's inaccuracies and omissions.

Bill Pang, the 30 year-old ex-Goldman trader cited by Fortune as working for Millennium Management, actually left the hedge fund in cuts a few months ago. Pang is in the process of endeavoring to set up his own fund. Insiders point out, too, that the list didn't include the real superstars like Tracy Britt Cool, the Warren Buffett protégé who left last year to set up her own business. 

"We had a good laugh at the list," says one portfolio manager at Millennium in New York. "It was a bit like calling someone a top 100 runner and then citing that they run half a mile daily," he added. Based on Fortune's reckoning that top hedge fund traders generate "tens of millions of profits" a year, the PM says most of the traders under 40 at ExodusPoint, Millennium and Balyasny would qualify for Fortune's list.

"Most desk heads on the sell-side are also under 40," he points out. 

If you have suggestions for alternative top traders under 40 years-old, leave a comment at the bottom of this article or let us know at the email address below, along with your reasons for nominating them.

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