This year, conference-goers traded pictures and videos of the US men's hockey party at the local club E11even on Monday night. The team flew in from the host country of the Winter Olympics, Italy, and left the next morning, providing a clean metaphor for the entire week: Miami is a getaway, not a home.
Bridgewater Associates' flagship money pool posted record gains, while D.E. Shaw & Co.'s strategies soared as much as 28% to rank among the biggest hedge fund winners of 2025 when tariff-fueled market uncertainty presented a fertile hunting ground for traders. Bridgewater's Pure Alpha II macro fund returned 34% last year, its best ever, while the All Weather strategy rose 20%, a person with knowledge of the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.
Hedge fund managers delivered another strong year in 2025, rewarding investors who poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the industry. Through November, hedge funds gained 10.8% in 2025, according to industry research firm PivotalPath's composite index, putting the industry on pace to eclipse 2024. Nearly every major strategy posted positive returns. But it wasn't the same story as 2024, when large hedge funds led the way to a stellar year for the industry. This year, it's the small hedge funds that have ruled.
All strategies mix good days and bumper years with bad days and market-lagging returns. For commodities traders in 2025, it was more of the latter. Conflict in the Middle East caused volatility in oil prices. President Donald Trump's tariff policies, and their uneven implementation, led to fluctuations in the prices of crops, such as soybeans. The growing use of data centers by artificial intelligence giants has changed the outlook for electricity demand so drastically that even top investors in the space are unsure what the future holds.
One of the City of London's most prominent financiers has become the latest billionaire to relocate abroad, adding momentum to the growing exodus of wealthy individuals from the UK. Alan Howard, the co-founder of hedge fund group Brevan Howard Asset Management, is understood to have taken up residency in Switzerland, according to UK registry filings cited by Bloomberg. Howard, 62,
Shares of Meta Platforms have advanced 13% year to date, bringing its market value to $1.6 trillion. Meanwhile, shares of Google parent Alphabet have advanced 64%, bringing the company's market value to $3.7 trillion. Three top hedge fund managers bought both stocks in the third quarter. Israel Englander of Millennium Management added 793,500 shares of Meta Platforms and 2.2 million shares of Alphabet. Both stocks rank among his top 10 holdings.
Eleven months into 2025, $55 billion hedge fund Viking Global sits in an underwhelming position. The long-running Tiger Cub - a nickname for the group of firms connected to the late Julian Robertson's Tiger Management - is up just 5.8% through November in its flagship stock-picking hedge fund after a 0.5% gain last month, a person close to the manager told Business Insider.
Stanley Druckenmiller of Duquesne Family Office bought 76,100 shares of Meta Platforms and 102,200 shares of Alphabet. They collectively account for 2% of his portfolio. Israel Englander of Millennium Management purchased 793,500 shares of Meta Platforms and 2.2 million shares of Alphabet. They are now his eighth- and fifth-largest holdings, respectively, excluding options.
He told Business Insider that he personally calls some of the most in-demand candidates during the decision-making process to see where their head is at. That includes not just senior-level recruits, but also recent grads, he said. "I get on the call with them to understand how they're going to make the decision - what is driving their decisions," Subramanian said. "And oftentimes we win those candidates."
The Invesco QQQ Trust tracks the performance of the Nasdaq 100 index and gives access to the 100 largest non-financial companies on the index. QQQ gives access to the top 100 tech stocks in a single ETF. The fund is rebalanced quarterly and reconstituted annually. The Invesco QQQ Trust is a weighted capitalization ETF which means that the companies with a larger market cap have a higher weightage in the ETF.
Private wealth - which refers to money held on platforms run by the private banking divisions of places like Goldman as well as wealth advice giants like Merrill Lynch, independent advisors, and family offices - is eager to invest in hedge funds and has plenty of capital to put to work. Goldman's report estimates that less than $500 billion of the $50.7 trillion of private wealth assets are in hedge funds.
For the most part, the big hedge funds have been mostly net sellers of stocks in recent quarters. And while it may seem ominous to have many smart money managers ringing the register this year, I'd argue that profit-taking and rotating capital into some of the more defensive areas of the market is only smart. Of course, taking a bit of capital off the risk-on AI trade for some cheaper, less-loved names comes with the risk of missing out on additional upside,
Riptide Advisors, Errickson's new multimanager firm that's set to start trading on January 1, was created to address the industry's biggest challenge: a shortage of talented, experienced portfolio managers. The new manager's focus, Errickson said, is to be "basically a seeding vehicle" that will let unproven but promising talent - think an analyst at a big firm like Millennium who has never managed a book on their own - run small portfolios of up to $20 million with the goal to add capital and responsibilities over time by graduating to the firm's larger funds.
Thames Water argued that an MP should be forced to pay its hefty legal costs after he represented the interests of the British public in court, a move he described as retaliation for pushing for government control of the crisis-hit utility, the Guardian can reveal. The UK's highest court this week rejected Thames Water's arguments that the Liberal Democrat MP Charlie Maynard should pay legal fees as high as 1,400 per hour.
The documentary Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink is now streaming on PBS through the end of the year, and I highly recommend it. Watching this film, viewers follow journalists as they battle vulture capitalist hedge funds. These hedge funds buy up local newspapers and gut their staff and resources. Finally, I understand what a hedge fund does!
Billionaire investors were quite active in the second quarter, with many of the big names going after a relatively narrow basket of stocks. Undoubtedly, great minds tend to think alike, especially in the world of investment. If one investment legend perceives deep value to be had in a specific stock, there's a good chance that others might also see an opportunity to get a steep discount to intrinsic value.
Tiger Management is expanding its investment approach by exploring diverse opportunities, including co-investments in public and private positions, as part of its Tiger 3.0 era.
"Hedge funds have had an emotionally turbulent ride in 2025, starting the year with soaring interest from big investors and optimism for the incoming Donald Trump administration. That optimism did not last long, however, as the President's tariff policies disrupted global trade and sent markets into a frenzy."
What's really important to firm leadership is ensuring that we always have our eyes on up-and-coming talent and that we're identifying and developing those who have the potential to be on the team.
Millennium's recent hires of Grau and Reich reflect continued interest in credit strategies, despite a noted decrease in demand for these approaches moving into 2025.
