Gabriel “Gabe” Plotkin is an American hedge fund manager who has a net worth of $400 million. Gabe is best-known for being the founder of Melvin Capital Management which had a public spat with a community of redditers in 2021 over the company GameStop.
He graduated from Northwestern University with an Economics degree in 2001. After college he went to work at the hedge fund Citadel LLC. He also worked for a Connecticut-based hedge fund called North Sound Capital and SAC Capital.
SAC Capital: At SAC Capital he managed a fund of consumer stocks worth $1.3 billion. According to federal prosecutors, at some point during his time at SAC Capital Gabriel was the recipient of insider information. In court filings, Plotkin was the so-called “Portfolio Manager B” and reportedly was forwarded a number of emails from a fellow portfolio manager that the SEC considered inside information.
In 2013 SAC pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $1.2 billion in penalties plus $616 million paid to the SEC. SAC’s founder, Steven A. Cohen, proceeded to return all outside capital and established a family office instead, which he called Point72 Asset Management. SAC was fully shuttered in 2016.
Melvin Capital: In the wake of the implosion of SAC, in 2014 Gabe Plotkin founded Melvin Capital Management. The firm, which is named after Gabe’s grandfather, quickly raised $1 billion in capital.
In 2017, it’s first full year in operation, Melvin generated a 47% return on assets, which made it the second-best performing hedge fund in the world (among hedge funds with more than $1 billion in assets under management). His compensation after that year’s performance was $300 million.
By 2018 the fund’s assets under management had ballooned to $3.5 billion.
The firm ended 2020 with $12.5 billion under management.
GameStop: In early 2021, members of the subreddit r/wallstreetbets built a groundswell of criticism aimed at fund managers like Plotkin who aggressively “shorted” the stock of struggling companies. The redditers paid particular attention to the short sales of video game rental company GameStop, which was the most-shorted stock on American exchanges.
The redditers banded together to perform a “short squeeze”, where the price of the stock is sent rocketing upward, causing the short sellers to lose massive amounts of money very quickly.
Melvin Capital reportedly lost 30% of its fund value very quickly thanks to its massive short position in GameStop. The losses were so large that Melvin reportedly had to request a $2.75 billion capital injection from Point72 and Citadel in exchange for the rights to a portion of the fund’s future revenues.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Melvin Capital lost 53% on its investments in January 2021 alone. According to the same WSJ article, Melvin started 2021 with $12.5 billion in assets and ended January with $8 billion – which includes the $2.75 billion in capital injected.
Michael Jordan/Hornets Investment: In 2019, Gabe and another hedge fund manager bought a portion of Michael Jordan’s ownership stake in the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets. The acquisition valued the Hornets at $1.5 billion.
Personal Life and Real Estate: In November 2020, Gabe paid a total of $44 million for two adjacent homes in North Bay Road in Miami, Florida. He filed plans with the city which showed plans to raze one of the properties and replace with a tennis court and gardens. He also owns property in New York City.
Gabe has been married to Yara Bank-Plotkin since 2006.
| Net Worth: | $400 Million |