Peter Muller

2019: $2 billion
2018 Rank: 4 ($1.3 billion)

Ray Dalio recently made headlines when he declared in an essay that capitalism is “not working well for the majority of Americans,” citing what he feels is a frighteningly widening gap between the haves and have-nots. But last year capitalism worked pretty well for Dalio himself.

2019: $1.5 billion
2018 rank: 1 ($1.7 billion)

Everything is relative — especially when it comes to performance. The Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund returned 8.52 percent last year, the first time in six years it failed to produce a return in the double digits. But that gain qualifies as a stellar return for Simons’ computer-driven fund, given its mandate to generate gross annual returns of 4 to 6 percentage points above the S&P 500 over rolling three- to five-year periods using average leverage of about 2.5 to 1. Last year the index fell 4.4 percent. 

2019: $870 million
2018 rank: 3 ($1.4 billion)

Citadel enjoyed a strong year in what was otherwise a difficult environment for hedge funds. The multistrategy giant posted a more than 9 percent gain in its flagship Wellington Fund last year, topping most other multistrategy funds. Citadel’s Global Fixed Income Fund gained 6.59 percent in 2018, and Global Equities rose 5.92 percent. 

Wellington made money in all five of its core strategies, led by its equities strategy, which takes a fundamental, sector-focused, market-neutral approach. Commodities was the second-biggest contributor, followed by quantitative strategies. 

2019: $820 million 
2018 Rank: 10 ($570 million)

Last year may have been bad for the equity markets, but it was good for quant giant Two Sigma and its two founders, John Overdeck and David Siegel. The firm posted much stronger results in 2018 than in the previous year despite the widespread losses suffered by the equity markets. The firm’s Spectrum fund returned 9.9 percent, and the Compass fund rose 13.9 percent. 

2019: $750 million
2018 Rank: 5 ($975 million)

Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management was one of the top-performing multistrategy firms last year, with its Millennium USA fund returning nearly 6 percent and its offshore counterpart gaining nearly 5 percent. That was enough to land Englander on the Rich List for the 17th time.

Millennium cut its exposure by 20 percent in October amid the global stock market sell-off, according to an investor in the firm’s funds. As a result, the fund made money in December, when stocks once again sharply declined. 

That performance undoubtedly helped Millennium raise $3.7 billion at the end of last year for a new five-year share class that limits investor redemptions to 5 percent per quarter, compared with the more common policy of 25 percent per quarter. This boosted the firm’s total assets under management to $37.9 billion as of year-end. The new Millennium class represents roughly 10 percent of the firm’s total capital.  

Englander, the son of Polish immigrants, grew up in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood. Englander and his wife, Caryl, donate large sums of money each year to a wide array of Jewish organizations and yeshivas, as well as to hospitals. He otherwise maintains a fairly low public profile.

2019: $530 million
2018 Rank: Did not qualify

2019: $500 million
2018 Rank: 8 ($600 million)

D.E. Shaw’s flagship fund wasn’t just one of the top-performing multistrategy hedge funds last year — it was one of the best-performing hedge funds, period. The D.E. Shaw Composite Fund, which mixes quantitative and fundamental strategies, gained 11.2 percent after surging 3.6 percent in December. This topped its performance in the previous year, when the fund gained 10.2 percent.

2019: $465 million
2018 Rank: 8 ($600 million)

Chase Coleman — a descendant of Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management Corp. who got his start with seed money from the legendary manager — firmly cemented his stature as one of the premier long-short equity hedge fund managers last year.

His firm posted a 13.6 percent net gain in its long-short fund, Tiger Global Investments. The fund made all of its money from short positions and private investments. The firm’s long-only fund, Tiger Global Long Opportunities, gained 3.4 percent last year, despite a 12.7 percent loss in the fourth quarter.

2019: $390 million
2018 Rank: Did not qualify

London-based macro specialist Alan Howard returns to the Rich List after a seven-year hiatus — the result of the firm posting its best gains since the financial crisis.

Last year the Brevan Howard Master Fund rose 14.2 percent, its strongest performance since 2009. The AH Master Fund — which Howard personally manages — surged 30 percent. It charges just a 0.75 percent management fee . . . but a 30 percent performance fee.

2019: $380 million
2018 Rank: Did not qualify

Macro maven Jeffrey Talpins returns to the Rich List first team — having settled for the second team last year — after his Element Capital Management posted an eye-popping 17.3 percent gain (and Element had been up about 25 percent through September). 

Last year, Talpins was long stocks and the U.S. dollar and short interest rates and the euro. He is widely credited for his strategic use of options. Element also had a sizable long equity position earlier in the year. 

2019: $325 million 
2018 Rank: 21 ($250 million)

Greg Jensen and Bob Prince — who serve as co-CIOs with Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio — helped to steer the firm’s flagship Pure Alpha strategy to a 14.6 percent gain, its best performance since 2011.

2019: $265 million
2018 Rank: 15 ($485 million)

Paul Singer’s Elliott, launched in 1977, eked out a gain of slightly less than 3 percent last year. But in a year when the various equities markets were in the red, it is still a fairly good accomplishment for the multistrategy firm best known for its global activist campaigns. 

2019: $250 million
2018 Rank: 20 ($260 million)

Last year, Tiger Global Management’s long-short fund posted a 13.6 percent net gain, making all of its money from short positions and private investments. Its long-only Tiger Global Long Opportunities fund rose 3.4 percent last year, despite posting a 12.7 percent loss in the fourth quarter. Not surprisingly, the short book generated a 12 percent gross gain for the year — virtually all of it coming in the fourth quarter, when equity markets tanked. 

2019: $200 million
2018 Rank: Did not qualify

Macro legend Paul Tudor Jones II returns to the Rich List for the first time in six years after his Tudor BVI Global fund posted a 10.3 percent gain, its best year since 2013. 

Tudor Maniyar Macro — the fund headed by Dharmesh Maniyar that uses machine-learning algorithms to inform its discretionary macro process — was up 15.4 percent. Late last year, Tudor Investment Corp. told investors it was planning to spin off Maniyar and its six-person team no later than 2020. 

2019: $115 million
2018 Rank: Did not qualify

Peter Brown is the sole chief executive officer of Renaissance Technologies following the departure of Robert Mercer, whose support of far-right groups became a lightning rod for the firm and founder Jim Simons. (Brown and Mercer both assumed their roles in 2010.) 

2019: $110 million

2018 Rank: Did not qualify

After a one-year hiatus, secretive quant-driven macro specialist Peter Muller qualifies for the Rich List for the second time. The roots of his firm, PDT Partners, trace back to 1992, when Muller started Morgan Stanley’s quantitative proprietary trading group. The firm, whose name stands for “process-driven trading,” became independent in 2013 because the Volcker rule, introduced after the financial crisis, prohibited banks from prop trading. “Our investment success is driven by rigorous research, cutting edge technology, and a disciplined focus on risk management and trade execution,” PDT says on its website. 

When he is not trading, Muller is a pianist and singer-songwriter, something he is more comfortable discussing with reporters than his investment prowess. 

In the late 1990s he took a sabbatical, traveling in Bhutan, kayaking down the Grand Canyon, and busking on New York City subway platforms with an electric keyboard, according to an Institutional Investor profile. “When I first left Morgan to do music, I thought, ‘Wow. I’ve got to really focus on music, and if I do that, I can’t do the finance,’” he told II in an interview in late 2017. “I realized that in your life, you can have more than one passion. The energy you get from one can go to the other.”

2019: $100 million
2018 Rank: Did not qualify

Caxton Associates offers a rare succession success story that began with Andrew Law taking control of the firm following founder Bruce Kovner’s retirement in 2011. This year Law makes the Rich List for the second time, after Caxton Global Investment posted a 3 percent gain in 2018. Although the firm did not hit its high-water mark, the macro specialist qualifies thanks to gains from his own capital in the fund. 

2019: $90 million
2018 Rank: 6 ($775 million)

Chris Hohn’s mostly long-only activist fund eked out an almost 1 percent gain last year. But when you have $3 billion of your own money invested in the fund, you are able to make enough to qualify for the Rich List. 

2019: $70 million
2018 Rank: Did not qualify

He’s baaa-aaack! Steven Cohen has returned to the Rich List for the first time in six years. Now, however, he ranks near the bottom of the list, having earned a “modest” $70 million after his firm, Point72 Asset Management, posted a less than 1 percent gain in its new hedge fund. This return was still better than those of the major stock indices, which posted losses last year.

2019: $65 million
2018 Rank: Did not qualify

2019: $63 million
2018 Rank: Did not qualify

2019: $50.8 million
2018: Did not qualify

Och-Ziff made a bold move in early 2018 when it recruited Robert Shafir from outside the firm to take over as chief executive officer, replacing founder Dan Och. Shafir was previously the chief executive of Credit Suisse Americas and co-head of its private banking and wealth management business.