Icahn, Paulson among those bruised by crude’s drop BloombergBill Gross is licking his wounds from falling oil prices.Bill Gross is among a number of investors licking their wounds from the steep plunge in oil prices. Gross’s $1.46 billion Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund JUCAX, +0.51% lagged behind its benchmark in the fourth quarter of 2014. The fund returned a negative 0.56% in the fourth quarter on a net asset value basis compared with a 0.06% return for three-month dollar-denominated Libor, or London interbank offered rate. “Its energy-sector exposure detracted the most from the fund’s performance,” Janus said in a quarterly summary published on its website. “Its exposure to U.S. dollar-denominated Russian and Brazilian corporate bonds also detracted.” It was the sharp fall in crude-oil prices during the quarter, as well as the drop in both countries’ currencies against the U.S. dollar, that drove underperformance, the summary said. Nymex West Texas Intermediate crude-oil futures plunged 42% in the fourth quarter of 2014 on a combination of weak demand growth and a global supply glut. “Both Russia and Brazil are major oil producers, and that affected both the fund’s energy and non-energy related names of those countries. Several of the fund’s other credit-sector allocations contributed to returns, namely telecommunications, media, technology, financials and retail,” Janus said. The hit to the Janus bond fund caused by oil’s fall may be particularly painful for Gross, given that he and his family own more than 51.2% of the Unconstrained Bond Fund’s shares, according to public filings. Gross’s oil pains aren’t unique. Other prominent investors have also been bruised by oil’s plunge. Carl Icahn was estimated late last year to have lost around $290 million on his firm’s holdings of Canadian oil-and-gas company Talisman Energy Inc. TLM, -0.26% Losses were even steeper before Talisman agreed to be acquired. Billionaire John Paulson’s hedge fund reportedly suffered one of its biggest losses of 2014 on a bet that big oil companies would acquire small firms. Instead, many of the smaller energy stocks held by Paulson plunged in value as oil prices tanked, though the strategy could still pay off. On the other side, big winners include Point State Capital LP, which, according to Bloomberg, scored a 27% return in 2014, after fees, by betting against a rise in oil prices. Meanwhile, another big winner appears to be the Merchant Commodity Fund, run by chief investment officer Doug King, reportedly saw a 59.3% 2014 gain on its oil-related bets. William Watts