Top 10 Biggest Hedge Funds In The World

All right, in this video, we're gonna walk you through the top 10 hedge funds of all time, and we're gonna give you a little background and history on how these funds started, who started them, and where they are today. Now, some of the numbers I'm about to share are not 100% accurate because they do change from month to month, but all the numbers we're grabbing today are from advratings.com and a number of other sources. But some of these funds have tens and even hundreds of billions of dollars in them, which in turn produces billions of dollars for their founders and top employees. And needless to say, hedge funds is one of the most lucrative vehicles on the planet. So with that, Let's dive in. Coming in at number 10 is Davidson Kempner Capital. This fund was founded by Marvin Davidson, hence the name, and is currently managed by Anthony Yulsoff. As of today, they have over $35 billion under management, and they specialize in the following strategies: merger acquisition, convertible arbitrage, bankruptcy restructuring situations, distressed investments, and event-driven equities. All right, now on to number 9, Citadel. Citadel is one of the infamous funds on Wall Street that is theorized was behind some of the short positions on AMC and GameStop. Citadel was founded in 1990, is currently run by Ken Griffin, and today manages over $35 billion under management. Now Citadel is one of the largest market makers in the stock market, options, interest rate swaps for retail institutional clients. You've seen them do short positions. They do a lot of crazy stuff. Go look them up. There's a lot of fun articles on Citadel. Now a little background on Ken Griffin. He started his investing career out of his Harvard dorm room in 1987, trading convertible bonds back in the day when bonds were actually sexy and fun to play around with. Out of college, he went and started working for a hedge fund called Glenwood out of Chicago and only 3 years later launched Citadel. Now, a crazy fact about Ken Griffin from just his one income source at Citadel, this does not include personal investments, other things, his net worth, one income source, Citadel, he makes over $100 million a month personally to himself for managing Citadel. Come on, $100 million a month. I don't even know what I would do. with $100 million. You would need a whole team on your side just to receive the capital and redeploy that into good investments. It's crazy how much money Ken Griffin makes on running a fund. By the way, if you're interested in starting a fund, we have another video on how to start a hedge fund from scratch. I've started multiple funds. This video walks you through step by step on starting your own hedge fund like Ken Griffin. All right, now on to number 8, we have BlackRock. Now you might see BlackRock here. We're going to talk about them in a second. They manage just over $9 Trillion, trillion with a T, trillion dollars. The world's largest asset manager is BlackRock. So why are they number 8 on the list? We're talking about their hedge fund division, which manages just over $40 billion. Now, if you're like me, and I'm actually going to lean in for a second on this, if you're like me, BlackRock is taking over the world. This is outside of their hedge fund division is number 8, but they as an asset manager are number 1 on the planet. They are backed by the Federal Reserve. It's really the Fed's way of doing their dirty work, if you want to call it that, around the world. Larry Fink is the founder of BlackRock, and they pretty much get as much money as they want from the Fed, and they can go do whatever they want with it. Okay, BlackRock recently was buying up single-family residences in Texas. They were buying thousands and thousands of homes. Why is BlackRock, who's backed by the Fed, buying thousands of homes in Texas? BlackRock's got its hands in companies and equities and stocks, bonds, and they are everywhere. And it's Jerome Powell's kind of secret way of playing the world through BlackRock. Now, as you can tell, you can go down a whole rabbit hole of what is actually going on. And actually, we have other videos maybe right here that I actually walk through my predictions on BlackRock, what's going on. Now, backing up for a second, pretty cool actually though about Larry Fink. So Larry Fink is the founder of BlackRock. He started his career at First Boston. And while at First Boston, him and a few other partners, they lost combined $100 million when he was early on in his career, which for a lot of people is devastating. I mean, $100 million is huge. But it was interesting. Larry Fink took this loss and it made him hyper-focused on risk management to ensure that this never happened again. He was dumbfounded how they were so smart and so sophisticated and somehow lost $100 million. And that's actually what ultimately led him to go and launch BlackRock and bring it to the success which it is today. So on here for investment strategy, BlackRock has a multi-asset strategy. I mean, I'm not even going to walk through this. They do current market. They do everything, dude. They do currencies. They do. I mean, they run the freaking world. If you want to know who runs the world, it's BlackRock, and they're backed by the Fed. Who really runs the world is the Fed. All right, number 7 is Millennium Management. Millennium is run and founded by Israel Englander. Israel and Ronald Shear founded the company back in 1989 with $35 million after trading for years on the New York Stock Exchange. They invest in public equity and fixed income markets on a global scale, emphasizing a focus on liquid asset classes. All right, now on to number 6. Two Sigma Investments. Two Sigma is run by David Siegel, John Overdeck, and Mark Pickard, and coming at six has $58 billion under management. This was started a little bit sooner. This was started in 2001. These three partners came together to bring together mathematics and algorithms to trading. John Overdeck is touted with his mathematics degree to write algorithms that can trade the markets and find inefficiencies in those markets. They're touted with using high-level computing strategies, AI, and other emerging technologies to find alpha inside of their fund and return high. Returns to their investors. And that brings us to number 5, Elliott Management. Elliott is run by Paul Singer, was founded in 1977, manages $70 billion, and get this, only has 472 employees. 5th largest hedge fund in the world only has 470 employees. That's a lot of money dispersed down to a very few individuals. That's why Harvard MBA grads are all tooth and nail clawing to get into hedge funds as their source of income. I mean, they just are so lucrative to be involved with hedge funds. I'm not even going to go on about Elliott Strategy. The fact is 472 people manage $70 billion. There's a lot of money to be made inside running hedge funds, which brings us to number 4, the famous Renaissance Technologies, founded and run by Howard Morgan and Jim Simons. They were founded in 1982. Today have over $130 billion under management. They have touted a 66% return for their investors for the past few decades. And their core fund at Renaissance is only open to founders, top employees, and really close family and friends of those founders. They haven't taken new money for the last decade. Yes, people with hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars, Saudi princes and huge famous whatever they are, have come to Jim and asked, can we give you money? He says, no, we don't want your money. We already have too much money to deal with. They're one of the most secretive and restrictive funds in the world. Even crazier about Renaissance is the fees that they charge investors. Most funds charge a 2.22% management fee and 20% of carried interest or the earnings on the returns. Renaissance charges 5% management fee and 45% of the returns, which is absolutely absurd. Yet, They manage $130 billion and people are begging to give them money. Why? Because they get such high returns. Over the last decade, they've averaged 66% returns for their investors. Now Renaissance is a quantitative investment firm who has a number of different strategies. Some people tout them illegal because they're using hyperactive trading strategies, other algorithms to play different markets and arbitrage between those markets. Whether you love it or hate it, their Medallion Fund is touted the best fund on Wall Street and is why it's the most exclusive fund on Wall Street. Coming in at number 3 is the Man Group with over $135 billion AUM. Now this fund, unlike others, is based out of England. They use a mix of long-only strategies across liquid and private markets. Now what's crazy is when Man Group was founded, they were founded all the way back in 1783. This is just after the American Revolution. They actually won the contract with the British government to supply the army with rum. I mean, right now you could cue the clip of Pirates of the Caribbean, like, why is the rum gone? The rum is gone. Why is the rum gone? Well, if you're with Man Group, the rum isn't gone 'cause these guys were supplying the rum. Or if it was gone, you're getting mad at the Man Group. That was their initial launch, and today, obviously, they've transitioned as an asset manager and a hedge fund for some of the wealthiest people on the planet. Man Group has also taken a huge pledge on ESG investing, which stands for environmental and social governance. They want to invest into clean new technologies and have impact on their investing. Right now there's over $40 trillion committed to ESG investing. If you don't know what I'm talking about, there's a video right here you guys can click over to that gives you my whole take on ESG funds and why I think it's the future of fund management. And there's a huge blue ocean opportunities for people like us to take advantage of those dollars. Coming in at number 2 is AQR Capital Management. Founded in 1998, Cliff Asness, David Kabler, John Liu, and Robert Krehl founded AQR with over $143 billion today under management. All 3 of the founders met in Chicago during their PhD program, then went on to work at Goldman Sachs, and then went on to leave and start AQR. They are best known for their alternative investing strategies. AQR was also one of the first fund managers to offer risk parity strategy, which aims to balance allocations based on underlying risk rather than an asset class. Which brings us to number 1, Bridgewater Associates. Bridgewater is run by The famous Ray Dalio, who's now dropped a number of books. If you haven't read them, go check them out. They were founded in 1975. They have over $140 billion under management. Ray Dalio started this out of his Manhattan apartment in his late 20s in 1975. They started by advising clients on domestic and international risk of currencies, and they'd follow different currencies between countries and trade to help mitigate risk for their clients. He is touted of being the pioneer of currency overlay, the separation of alpha and beta strategies, and absolute return projects and risk parity specifically inside of currencies. They were the fastest growing fund from the year 2000 to 2005, and then in 2005 stopped accepting new investors. It's funny, a lot of these funds actually top out because they can only deploy so much capital and also only accept so many investors. And interestingly, the SEC is they will stop a fund from raising from more than 1,999 investors. Hence why some of these funds are so limited on how much money you can put in. At the time, you had to have a $5 billion net worth With a minimum commitment of $100 million to invest in Bridgewater. Ray also touts quantitative investment strategies and computing and AI to help them make investing decisions. Additionally, if you want to learn how to start your own fund, watch these 2 other videos right here where they walk you through the steps of launching and scaling your very own hedge fund. How to raise capital, how to deploy it, the whole 9 yards. Thank you all so much and I'll see you in the next video. Bye. Bye.