Top 10 U.S. Hedge Funds Of January 2024 (2024)

In 1975, Bridgewater Associates was founded by Ray Dalio in his Manhattan apartment. Today Bridgewater is the largest hedge fund in the world and Dalio has a personal fortune of approximately $19 billion.

The fund serves institutional clients such as pension funds, foreign governments and central banks, as well as charitable foundations, family offices and high net worth individuals.

Strategies include actively invested Pure Alpha and Pure Alpha Major Markets, as well as its All Weather strategy, which focuses on asset allocation, and the related Optimal Portfolio.

As of early 2023, Bridgewater had raised $800 million for its new Defensive Alpha strategy, which is intended to help investors weather bear markets.

Renaissance Technologies was founded in 1982 by James Simons, a mathematician who worked as a code breaker during the Cold War.

The firm uses mathematical and statistical methods as the basis for its investment strategies. RenTec’s flagship Medallion fund, run primarily for employees, has one of the best track records in the industry.

Portfolios offered to outside investors include the Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund (RIEF) and Renaissance Institutional Diversified Alpha (RIDA).

Of the fund’s 300 employees, 90 hold doctoral degrees in mathematics, physics, computer science, or related fields.

AQR was founded in 1998 by Cliff Asness, David Kabiller, John Liew and Robert Krail. The firm’s name includes an acronym that stands for applied quantitative research, which is an apt descriptor for its strategy.

Offering its clients more than 40 diversified strategies across equity and alternatives, the firm applies the rigor of academic research to identifying long-term, repeatable sources of return.

AQR was a pioneer in factor investing, and it applies value, momentum, defensive, and carry styles to build portfolios that offer low correlation to traditional equity dominated strategies.

Two Sigma was founded by John Overdeck, David Siegel and Mark Pickard in 2001. The firm employs research methods inspired by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and distributed computing to support its trading strategies.

Following a disciplined, scientific approach, Two Sigma seeks to consistently generate alpha in liquid global markets across the range of market conditions. The firm has been recognized for generating unusually high returns.

Founded in 1989, Millennium pursues a diverse array of investment strategies across sectors, asset classes, and geographic regions.

The firm’s four primary strategies include fundamental equity, equity arbitrage, fixed income, and quant, with a variety of sub-strategies within each category.

The investment process is driven by over 200 independent portfolio management teams that pursue opportunities within their areas of expertise.

Citadel was founded in 1990 by Kenneth Griffin, who continues to serve as the firm’s CEO. With more than 350 investment professionals, Citadel invests in commodities, credit and convertibles, equities, global fixed income and macro, and global quantitative strategies.

One of the most profitable hedge funds of all times, Citadel generated $16 billion in profits for its investors in 2022, and earned $65.9 billion in net gains since 1990, making it the top-earning hedge fund ever.

Tiger Global Management was founded in 2001 by Chase Coleman III as Tiger Technology to invest in the public equity market. Coleman was a protege of Tiger Management’s Julian Robertson, and received $25 million from Robertson to start Tiger Technology.

This hedge fund focuses on public and private companies in the global Internet, software, consumer, and financial technology industries. The public equity business takes a fundamentally oriented, long-term approach to investment and seeks to identify high-quality companies that benefit from powerful secular growth trends and superior management.

D.E. Shaw was founded by David Shaw in 1988, starting out with only six employees. A pioneer in the field of computational finance and quantitative investing, the firm has over 2000 employees today, 80 of whom hold doctoral degrees.

This hedge fund uses strategies based on rigorous analysis and scientific research, and aims to identify market inefficiencies through qualitative, quantitative and advanced computational methods. It invests in a broad array of asset classes spanning public and private markets, emphasizing a collaborative approach to investing.

Coatue is a technology-focused hedge fund founded by Philippe Laffont in 1999. The firm invests in both public and private markets with its principal focus on the technology, media, and telecommunications sectors, and the healthcare and consumer segments in addition.

Coatue employs more than 50 investment professionals and 24 data scientists and engineers. Their private investment portfolio includes more than 200 technology companies.

Davidson Kempner was founded in 1983 by Marvin Davidson. The firm employs a bottom-up, fundamental approach to investing, with a focus on event-driven and multi-strategy approaches.

Investing globally, Davidson Kempner focuses on risk management and capital preservation, and invests opportunistically in both the public and private markets in a variety of credit and equity strategies as well as in real assets.