UPDATE 1-Third Point, Jana gain in March, Greenlight Capital flat

(Recasts with numbers from other managers, adds details on
returns)
By Svea Herbst-Bayliss
BOSTON, March 31 (Reuters) - Billionaire hedge fund
investors Daniel Loeb and Barry Rosenstein made money in March
when the stock market came back with stronger gains, but both
men's funds are still in the red for the year, sources familiar
with their performance said.
Loeb's Third Point Partners fund gained 3.2 percent in March
but is off 1.9 percent for the year while Rosenstein's Jana
Partners Fund inched up 1.2 percent during March, leaving it
down 6.1 percent for the year, the sources said.
Loeb and Rosenstein are among the most closely watched
players in the $3 trillion hedge fund industry and are
traditionally among the first to share their performance data,
often emailing clients with returns just a few hours after the
closing bell of the last trading day of the month.
David Einhorn, whose Greenlight Capital is also tracked
closely, is boasting gains of 3.3 percent for the year after a
terrible 2015 when he lost 20.2 percent. For March, Einhorn's
fund was flat, a source familiar with the returns said on
Thursday.
All the managers declined to comment on their performance.
Thanks to a 3.7 percent gain in March, the broader Standard
& Poor's 500 stock index is now back in the black with a 0.8
percent gain for the year after a rocky start that was colored
by fears about global growth and where interest rates may move.
Hedge funds, unlike mutual funds, are able to bet on rising
as well as falling securities, something that analysts say
should have helped them weather this year's storm better than
other types of investment managers. But many hedge funds were
caught off guard by the gyrations in January and have not
performed well this year.
Early numbers from Hedge Fund Research show the average fund
down 1.85 percent this year after having inched up 1.27 percent
in March.
At Greenlight, Einhorn was helped when Apple AAPL.O , one
of his largest holdings, climbed 8 percent in March. But another
key investment in Sunedison SUNE.N hurt the manager when the
stock tumbled 69 percent in March.
Rosenstein's Jana Partners sidestepped some trouble when the
manager sold out of its holding in Valeant VRX.TO , the
pharmaceutical company that tumbled 61 percent this month,
someone familiar with the holdings said.