The Rich List: The 24th Annual Ranking of the Highest-Earning Hedge Fund Managers

Millennium Management

$4 billion

Izzy Englander is back on top. After three straight second-place finishes, the 55-year Wall Street veteran heads II’s Rich List for the first time since 2020. He has qualified for the ranking in 23 of its 24 years. The multistrategy fund, which posted a 15 percent gain in 2024, is rarely the strategy’s top performer. But Englander’s risk management and penchant for firing underperformers early on has resulted in only one down year — a small 3 percent decline in 2008 amid the financial crisis — since Millennium was launched, in 1989. Today the firm has more than 330 investment teams managing $78 billion in four major strategies: relative-value fundamental equity, equity arbitrage, fixed-income, and quantitative. Late last year, the firm raised $10 billion even though it received requests to hand over $20 billion. Under the fundraising terms, Millennium will call the capital only when it needs to deploy the cash. Englander, now 78, is reportedly mulling the sale of stakes in his firm to certain executives.

Citadel

$3.3 billion

Ken Griffin finished behind his multistrategy archrival for the second straight year after posting a 15.1 percent gain in his flagship fund, Wellington. All five of the fund’s broad strategies — commodities, equities, fixed-income, credit, and quantitative — made money last year. The firm’s Tactical Trading fund surged 22.3 percent, Citadel Global Equities gained 18 percent, and Global Fixed Income rose 9.7 percent. Last month, Citadel, which a few years back moved from Chicago to Miami, sold $2 billion of bonds to bankroll a payout to its owners and for fund-level debt. Griffin is currently building an estate in Palm Beach for his mother that is said to be one of the most expensive in the world. In 2024, he sold the top two floors of a Chicago condo building for 44 percent less than he had paid and also donated more than $100 million to conservative causes, including political action committees, during the presidential election cycle. But this didn’t stop him from questioning the wisdom of President Trump’s tariffs. He told the audience at a conference hosted by UBS that tariffs are a threat to economic growth and criticized Trump’s “bombastic rhetoric,” noting, “The uncertainty and chaos created by the tariff dynamics between us and our allies is an impediment to growth. It makes it difficult for multinationals in particular to think about how to plan for the next five, ten, 15, 20 years.”

Point72 Asset Management

$3.2 billion

Steve Cohen’s hedge fund posted a 19 percent gain in 2024, enjoying its best year since 2018, when Point72 was once again permitted to raise outside capital. However, Cohen made his biggest headline last year when his New York Mets baseball team committed $765 million — about one-quarter of his 2024 earnings — over 15 years to superstar free agent Juan Soto. Earlier this year, Point72 had planned to return between $3 billion and $5 billion to investors. It also slightly increased fees, requiring investors to bear more of the firm’s expenses. Point72 has more than 185 money management teams overseeing $36.9 billion-plus. In September 2024, Cohen stepped back from trading his own book at the hedge fund but remained the firm’s co–chief investment officer. Last year, Point72 announced it planned to launch a $1 billion AI-focused hedge fund. Its largest strategy, by both assets and head count, is discretionary long-short equities. Others include Cubist Systematic Strategies, which engages in automated trading in many liquid markets; a global macro business that makes discretionary investments; and a private venture capital business.

Coatue Management

$1.9 billion

Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Management was in fundraising mode last year after gaining 18.7 percent in its main long-short fund, which put it above its high-water mark. In November, Bloomberg reported that the Tiger Cub was hoping to raise $1 billion for its flagship fund to boost investments in artificial intelligence and tech innovation. It was mostly targeting institutional investors. In addition, the firm raised about $3 billion for a structured equity fund, according to a separate Bloomberg report. It started to deploy the strategy in 2022. Coatue’s top holdings last year were several of the so-called Magnificent Seven stocks, led by Facebook parent Meta Platforms and Amazon, the two largest U.S.-listed long positions throughout 2024. The firm also had big positions in chip giant Nvidia and Microsoft. Coatue, once a big venture capital player, ramped up activity in the private markets last year, making at least 43 new investments compared with 29 in 2023, according to Crunchbase.

Appaloosa Management

$1.7 billion

David Tepper enjoyed a much better year than his struggling professional football team, the Carolina Panthers, which won just five games. Appaloosa posted an 8.25 percent gain last year, putting Tepper fifth on the Rich List as he qualifies for the 21st time. The eclectic hedge fund benefited from an outsize stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, which accounted for 12 to 15 percent of U.S.-listed long positions throughout the year. The stock was up about 9 percent. This was part of Tepper’s plan, articulated in September, to buy “everything” China. Sure enough, in the fourth quarter Tepper boosted his stakes in Alibaba by more than 18 percent and in Chinese e-commerce company JD.com by over 43 percent.

D.E. Shaw

$1.6 billion

In 2024, D.E. Shaw enjoyed its best results in recent years. The Oculus Fund, a macro-oriented multistrategy fund, generated a 36.1 percent increase, its best since its 2004 launch. It has never suffered a losing year. The Composite Fund, the firm’s largest, climbed 18 percent. These strong gains enabled the firm to make $11.1 billion for its investors last year, topping LCH Investments’ annual ranking of the top-20 hedge fund managers. D.E. Shaw planned to return roughly half of the profits to outside investors. Founder David Shaw ranks sixth on the Rich List even though he has not run any of the funds on a day-to-day basis since 2001, when he decided to devote his time to scientific research. He launched the firm in 1988 as a computer-driven quant firm, but it now incorporates fundamental investing strategies as well. Last year, it raised $1 billion for D.E. Shaw Alkali Fund VI — its latest private credit fund. In addition, D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments, launched in 2010, agreed to sell a significant minority stake to Macquarie Asset Management.

Rokos Capital Management

$1.4 billion

Macro trader Chris Rokos quadrupled his earnings last year, posting a 30.7 percent gain. The aggressive hedge fund manager, known for making big leveraged bets on interest rates, reportedly generated $1 billion in profits the day after the U.S. election on the so-called Trump trade — generally being long the U.S. dollar, stocks, and bitcoins and short rates, though it is not clear which asset classes helped him the most. Rokos, a co-founder of Brevan Howard who launched his London-based firm in 2015, had made money on the sharp rise in copper prices, according to Bloomberg. In the fourth quarter, he made a big bet on the Invesco QQQ Trust series, which tracks the price and yield of the Nasdaq-100 index. Rokos managed $17 billion about a year ago and trades seven different macro asset classes. He recently listed his home in Manalapan, Florida, for $150 million, more than triple the $40 million he shelled out when he bought it in 2017, according to Realtor.com, which describes it as a 35,000-square foot Bali-inspired waterfront estate.

Tiger Global Management

$1.3 billion

Tiger Cub and early Tiger Seed Chase Coleman made ten figures last year after Tiger Global Management posted a 23.8 percent gain in its long-short fund and a 26.3 percent rise in its long-only fund. The firm, which has a modified high-water mark, barely traded its largest holdings all year, taking a buy-and-hold approach. Five of its seven largest U.S.-listed long positions were Magnificent Seven stocks accounting for nearly half of those assets, led by Meta Platforms, which represented more than 16 percent. Microsoft, Alphabet, Nvidia, and Amazon were the others. Alternative-investment giant Apollo Global Management was the firm’s third-largest long position. In late 2023, Coleman retook full control of the firm’s private equity (venture capital) arm from Scott Shleifer and is now solely responsible for all investment activities at the firm, bankrolled with $25 million from the late Julian Robertson Jr. Last year, a new VC fund raised $2.2 billion, much less than it originally sought before the VC market all but blew up.

TCI Fund Management

$1.3 billion

London-based Chris Hohn dropped from the top spot on the 2023 Rich List to eighth place after posting a 15 percent increase, less than half the previous year’s return. Putting its performance in perspective, TCI emphasized in its fourth-quarter client letter that the S&P 500 — which finished 2024 up 25 percent — would have risen only 13 percent without the eight largest technology, media, and telecom stocks. Hohn, who sometimes engages in activist campaigns, typically runs a concentrated mostly long portfolio. His $44 billion U.S. stock portfolio held just ten stocks at year-end. GE Aerospace, the largest U.S. long position, was up more than 65 percent last year. TCI had boosted its stake by more than 6.5 million shares in first-quarter 2024, to nearly 59 million shares, but then unloaded more than 10 million shares the following quarter. The stock of credit rating company Moody’s, TCI’s second-largest U.S.-listed long, rose more than 20 percent. TCI also did well last year with its long-held investment in Safran, a French multinational aerospace, defense, and security company. The stock jumped about 23 percent last year.

Lone Pine Capital

$1.1 billion

Tiger Cub Stephen Mandel Jr. enjoyed his best year since 2019 or 2020 — depending upon the fund — when both his long-short and long-only funds garnered 36 percent gains last year. The tech-driven manager, who for several years has not run his funds on a day-to-day basis but remains a member of the management committee, was significantly exposed all year to Magnificent Seven stocks Meta Platforms and Amazon, the two largest U.S.-listed long positions in the second half of the year, and Microsoft. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Philip Morris International were also important stocks for most of 2024. These days, David Craver and Kelly Granat serve as co–chief investment officers. In the third quarter, Lone Pine wiped out all of the losses it incurred several years ago, though it remains well below its high-water mark thanks to a modified plan it pioneered a number of years ago. The firm currently manages about $17 billion, more than half the $31 billion it was managing at the end of 2020.

Elliott Management

$1 billion

Multistrategy specialist Paul Singer rarely comes close to topping the hedge fund performance rankings. Last year, when he posted a gain of just 10.5 percent, was no different. The octogenarian is one of the longest-tenured hedge fund managers, having launched Elliott Management in 1977. Since then, it has generated an average annualized return of about 13 percent and has suffered only two losing years. Despite the wide array of strategies Elliott deploys, it is best known for its activism. In the past year, it has taken on a slew of high-profile companies. In October, Elliott settled with Southwest Airlines, which agreed to appoint six board members to avoid a proxy fight. Last summer, an activist campaign with Starbucks resulted in the appointment of a new CEO. In February, Honeywell said it would split into two companies — aerospace and automation — in response to pressure from Elliott, and would go ahead with a previously announced plan to spin off its advanced materials arm. Also in February, the firm took a large stake in energy giant BP and is urging it to make major asset sales. As of June 30, Elliott managed about $69.7 billion. It is engaged in equities, private equity and private credit, distressed securities, nondistressed debt, hedge/arbitrage, real estate–related securities, commodities trading, and portfolio volatility protection.

Viking Global Investors

$970 million

Viking’s 11.4 percent gain from its long-short fund may have lagged many of the other high-profile Tiger Cubs last year, as well as the overall market. But O. Andreas Halvorsen’s investors probably didn’t mind, with Viking passing its high-water mark during the summer of 2023. A number of its fellow felines are still in the red today. What’s more, Viking’s long-only fund rose a respectable 21.4 percent last year. The two funds’ disparity in performance suggests Viking’s hedge fund may have been hurt in part by its short book. The long portfolio is generally less tech-heavy than those of other Tiger Cubs. This said, in the first half of the year Viking got a big boost from Amazon, its largest long in the first quarter, before it slashed the position by more than 70 percent in the second half of the year. The firm was also helped by banking giant U.S. Bancorp, a major position all year. At year-end, Viking’s five largest U.S.-listed long positions were financial services or payments companies: JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bancorp, Visa, Bank of America, and Schwab.

Two Sigma

$970 million

John Overdeck and David Siegel’s disintegrating relationship grew so acrimonious late last summer that Two Sigma, the $60 billion-in-assets firm they founded in 2001, announced the pair would step down as co–chief executive officers but remain as co-chairmen. In 2023, the quantitative-driven firm had stunningly disclosed in a regulatory filing that the management committee — comprised only of Overdeck and Siegel — “has been unable to reach agreement on a number of topics” and that it had become difficult to attract and retain employees, calling the situation a “material risk.” Still, last year, the firm’s Spectrum fund was up 10.9 percent, and its Absolute Return Enhanced fund gained 14.3 percent. Both are mostly equity quant funds but also dabble in other strategies. Siegel, a computer scientist, and Overdeck, a mathematician, met while working at D.E. Shaw. They are now in arbitration, according to Bloomberg. Late last year, new management laid off about 200 people, roughly 10 percent of the total workforce, after a review of operations.

Marshall Wace

$705 million

His name may not be on the door at the Marshall Wace offices, but Anthony Clake is clearly the star of the show these days. Once again, his MW TOPS computer-driven funds led the London firm’s performance parade, this time with a 22.6 percent gain. As a result, Clake qualifies for the Rich List for the third straight year. Roughly two-thirds of Marshall Wace’s $69 billion in assets at year-end was in systematic strategies, and about a third of its more than 700 employees work in technology-related roles. Marshall Wace calls TOPS, launched in 2002, the world’s first “alpha capture” application. The fund is market-neutral and invests primarily in European equities, seeking to derive alpha from the stock ideas of European sell-side analysts. In his spare time, Clake has funded the search for about 30 shipwrecks.

Discovery Capital Management

$695 million

Tiger Cub Robert Citrone makes the Rich List for the first time since 2013 after putting together one of the best two-year performances among hedge funds, posting gains of 52.7 percent in 2024 and 48 percent in 2023. The combination macro trader and fundamental equities investor was driven last year by “effective long and short positioning across countries and themes, further enhanced by targeted security selection within those macro frameworks,” according to his year-end client letter. Citrone also lauded the firm’s ability to identify “compelling, company-specific short opportunities.” Credit kicked in more than 28 percentage points to gross gains, equities over 15 percent, and currencies 6 percent-plus. Discovery benefited from equity and credit positioning in key themes in emerging markets such as Argentina, Ecuador, and India and in developed markets, where financials and TMT, including AI-related positions, added gains. “Our nimble approach allowed us to strategically adjust to evolving market dynamics, such as reducing long exposures in Mexico post-election, covering shorts in China following stimulus announcements, and swiftly implementing our road map after the Trump victory,” Discovery said in a client report.

Schonfeld Strategic Advisors

$575 million

Steven Schonfeld returns to the Rich List after a two-year hiatus thanks to a 21.1 percent gain in his Fundamental Equities fund and a 19.7 percent gain in his Strategic Partners multistrategy fund. Schonfeld deploys a multimanager platform across quantitative, fundamental equity, tactical, and discretionary macro and fixed-income trading strategies. He started his firm in 1988 as a family office to manage his own capital with $400,000 he had earned as a stockbroker and began accepting outside capital in 2015. Today he manages $12 billion and employs roughly 1,000 people across four core strategies. Last year, Schonfeld made money in several regions, led by the U.S. and followed by Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The quant strategy was driven primarily by statistical arbitrage across all time horizons and implementation techniques. In its fundamental equities strategy, all sectors made money, led by Asia, technology, health care, and generalist teams. Within discretionary macro and fixed-income, relative value led the way, followed closely by global macro. Performance in the tactical strategy was positive across all substrategies.

Pershing Square Capital Management

$550 million

Bill Ackman’s 10.2 percent gain last year marked the first time the sometimes activist failed to beat the S&P 500 since 2017. And he can’t blame shorting, which he publicly pledged to give up several years ago. Pershing Square, which runs a very concentrated portfolio, was boosted last year by alternative-investment firm Brookfield’s nearly 50 percent gain, with most of that coming after the hedge fund made its investment in April. It also enjoyed increases from Google parent Alphabet and casual Mexican dining company Chipotle Mexican Grill. On the other hand, nearly half of Pershing Square’s stocks lost money, including Nike, which dropped more than 30 percent. Restaurant Brands fell 14 percent, Canadian Pacific was off about 7 percent, and Howard Hughes Holdings declined by about 5 percent. Over the last few years, Ackman has been in the media spotlight for being one of several Wall Street Ivy League grads who criticized their alma maters and other major colleges for how they handled campus protests over the war in Gaza and allegations of anti-semitism following the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel.

Jericho Capital Asset Management

$475 million

The only newcomer this year, Josh Resnick makes his Rich List debut after Jericho posted the largest gain in its 16-year history. The TMT specialist’s flagship fund was up 59.5 percent, and the more concentrated Jericho Capital Special Opportunities fund surged 120.6 percent. Jericho, which lost 23 percent in 2022, hit its high-water mark early last year. Its shorts ended 2024 flat after being up for most of the year. Shares of the largest longs were all up sharply last year. Big winners included Netflix, which Jericho made its largest long in the first quarter. The stock was up more than 80 percent last year. In the first quarter of 2024, Jericho nearly tripled its stake in AppLovin Corp., which produces software for marketing, monetizing, and analyzing apps. The stock quadrupled in the second half of the year alone. Jericho, founded by Resnick in 2009, also held a big stake in chip maker Nvidia. It currently manages more than $4 billion.

Caxton Associates

$425 million

Andrew Law returns to the Rich List for the first time in five years after posting an 8.5 percent increase in the flagship Caxton Global Investments, which he personally manages, and a 13 percent gain in Caxton Macro Fund. The macro firm made money from long positions in gold throughout the year. The firm also was well positioned for the 50 basis point cut by the Federal Reserve in September. Caxton is the rare hedge fund firm that has thrived after the founder retired. The Goldman Sachs alum, who is based in London, took over the firm at the end of 2011 following the retirement of founder Bruce Kovner. Today it manages $14.5 billion. The Law Family Charitable Foundation targets charities in education, culture, health, and the environment.

Balyasny Management

$420 million

Dmitry Balyasny posted his best results since 2020, when his multistrategy fund Atlas Enhanced, which contains the bulk of the firm’s assets, was up 13.6 percent. Long-short equities were the big driver last year. BAM manages more than $21 billion, deploying investment teams emphasizing five core strategies: equities long-short, fixed-income & macro, commodities, multiasset arbitrage, and systematic. It was created within Schonfeld Securities in 1994 and formally launched as an independent entity in 2001, trading mostly long-short equity. The Kiev, Ukraine–born Balyasny, who came to the United States when the Soviet Union lifted restrictions on Jewish emigration, is a big admirer of libertarian writer Ayn Rand. In fact, his funds were named for her most famous work, the novel Atlas Shrugged.

Element Capital Management

$405 million

Jeffrey Talpins is back on the Rich List after a three-year hiatus. His macro firm posted a 22.5 percent gain in 2024 after losing money in each of the previous three years. Element invests mostly in fixed-income, foreign exchange, and equity markets. The firm, which managed as much as $20 billion in 2020, reportedly returned $6 billion to investors last year, reducing total capital to $3 billion. In fourth-quarter 2024, Element liquidated virtually its entire $2.2 billion U.S. equity portfolio. Talpins lately has been deploying most of his U.S. common stock allocation to well-diversified exchange-traded funds. He launched Element in 2005, initially on the Proxima Alfa incubation platform, then spun it out in 2007. Talpins studied option theory under Jonathan Ingersoll, who helped develop the Cox-Ingersoll-Ross asset pricing model. He also learned portfolio theory from David Swensen, the longtime CIO of Yale’s endowment fund and a member of II’s Hedge Fund Hall of Fame, and finance theory from Nobel Prize–winning economist Robert Shiller.

Third Point

$400 million

Dan Loeb returned to his high-water mark after posting a 24.2 percent gain in his flagship offshore fund last year, Third Point’s best result since 2021. This followed the multistrategy firm’s anemic 4 percent gain in 2023 and 21.8 percent loss in 2022. Third Point was boosted last year by a 9.1 percent gain in the fourth quarter. Its 2024 return was driven by positive performance from all of its strategies: equities, corporate and structured credit, and privates. Its five biggest winners were an unnamed private company, energy company Vistra Corp., Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. In his third-quarter letter, Loeb predicted Donald Trump would win the election and would have a positive impact on certain sectors and the overall market. “We believe the proposed ‘America First’ policy’s tariffs will increase domestic manufacturing, infrastructure spending, and prices of certain materials and commodities,” he wrote. “We also believe that a reduction in regulation generally and especially in the activist antitrust stance of the Biden-Harris administration will unleash productivity and a wave of corporate activity.”

Tudor Investment

$390 million

Legendary macro trader Paul Tudor Jones II qualifies for the Rich List for the first time since 2020 after posting a 6.5 percent gain last year. In early February, following President Trump’s initial announcement that he planned to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, Jones said in an interview with CNBC that the economic environment was “precariously perched from a macro standpoint. . . . This is a completely, totally different landscape than Trump 1.0.” He went on to say, “I don’t think we’ve ever had as many things that connected and circular and [that] could go wrong. It’s going to take a maestro to pull this off in a way that kind of preserves where we are now in the major economic assets.” Jones also noted that conditions are very different for stocks, bonds, and foreign investments than in Trump’s first term, stressing that markets are on “much shakier ground.” He added that price-to-earnings ratios on stocks are 30 percent higher than in January 2017, and even if there were a 30 percent correction, stocks would still be “slightly overvalued.”

D1 Capital Partners

$375 million

Viking Global Investors alum Dan Sundheim was one of the top-performing Tiger Cubs last year. D1 Capital Partners posted a better than 44 percent gain in its publics-only portfolio, enabling it to finally return to its high-water mark. The firm, which emphasizes industrials and consumer stocks, was buoyed by an outsize stake in Maplebear, the parent of Instacart, which was D1’s largest long and accounted for 16 to 17 percent of U.S.-listed assets all year. Philip Morris International, the second-largest U.S. long position most of the year, rose nearly 40 percent. European drivers of performance included Siemens Energy, Rolls-Royce Holdings, and UniCredit. The firm’s largest private holdings include SpaceX, Lineage, Collectors, Bolt, and Ramp. After suffering large losses in 2021 and 2022, Sundheim instituted a number of major changes to his portfolio strategy and to the level of risk he was willing to tolerate. D1 also made personnel changes in the investment team, broadening its coverage to include more industries and stocks and reinstating its focus on single-name shorts. In addition, it sharply lowered its gross and net exposure levels.