At Institutional Investor, we have many ways to judge a hedge fund. We can tell you who’s the best by AUM, by performance for investors, or by personal wealth.
But each produces a different winner, a different best hedge fund.
Institutional Investor’s Hedge Fund 100 ranking in 2011, for example, put Ray Dalio in the top spot by assets under management. The same ranking saw John Paulson slip from third to fourth.
But our sister publication, Absolute Return–Alpha, may have given Paulson some crumb of comfort. By that measurement, he was the top dog, having made $4.9 billion in 2010, bringing him up to $12.9 billion in earnings over the last four years. Dalio, despite having the larger firm, made $3.1 billion, principally because he has less of his money in his own funds than Paulson.
But if we judge hedge funds by how much money they make for their investors, as InstitutionalInvestor.com did early this year, one gets different result again. This time, it was George Soros who led the list with his Quantum Endowment fund, with Paulson and Dalio dumped into second and third, respectively.
So who’s appears most across all our rankings? Which hedge fund managers are the best of the best?
