Andy Hall's Fund Down 4 pct in January

Prominent oil bull Andy Hall said his Astenbeck Capital Management lost 4 percent in January as tottering global markets extended last year's gloom that cost the hedge fund its biggest annual loss of 36 percent.

"If 2015 ended badly, then the start of 2016 was even worse," Hall wrote in his monthly letter to Astenbeck's investors, seen by Reuters on Tuesday.

The epicenter of January's market anxiety was China, and the U.S. Federal Reserve's December rate hike, the first in nearly a decade, added to worries, causing oil prices to plunge with other assets, he said. "Oil's collapse was being read as the harbinger of some greater economic malaise."

The January loss caused assets under management at the Southport, Connecticut-based Astenbeck to decline by about $100 million to $2 billion, performance data issued by the fund to investors showed.

Reporting By Barani Krishnan