Steven A. Cohen
Scott Eells | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Steve Cohen, founder of the hedge fund Point72 and owner of the New York Mets, disabled his Twitter account after his family received threats this week amid GameStop’s trading frenzy.
“I really enjoyed coming and going with Mets fans on Twitter, which unfortunately was overcome this week by incorrect information unrelated to Mets that led our family to receive personal threats,” Cohen said in a statement on Saturday.
“So I’m going to take a break for now. We have other ways to listen to your suggestions and we remain committed to doing so,” he said.
Cohen’s hedge fund, which manages nearly $ 19 billion in assets, lost nearly 15% this year after small investors caused the shares of video game retailer GameStop to skyrocket, a source familiar with the matter told The New York Times.
The losses at Point72 are mainly due to the company’s investment in the hedge fund Melvin Capital, which bet against GameStop and had to receive almost $ 3 billion in emergency cash from two outside investors, one of which was Point72.
Cohen, who bought Mets for about $ 2.5 billion in November, faced doubts on Twitter about how Melvin’s losses would impact the baseball team.
On Thursday, Cohen also had an exchange of ideas with Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy on Twitter, after Portnoy accused Cohen of being involved with controversial GameStop trade restrictions on apps like Robinhood.