A list of notable hedge funds, grouped by strategy

A list of hedge funds ranked by assets under management is out of date before it is even published. Funds raise, redeem, and reprice their books constantly, and last quarter's number twenty could be this quarter's number twelve. What stays useful for much longer is knowing what a fund does, since strategy is a far more stable identifier than a dollar figure. This list groups well known funds by the approach that defines them.

Global macro

Global macro funds take large, directional positions based on views about interest rates, currencies, and broad economic trends rather than individual company analysis. Bridgewater Associates, founded by Ray Dalio in 1975, is the best known name in the category and popularized "risk parity," a portfolio construction approach that allocates by risk contribution rather than by dollar amount across asset classes. Brevan Howard, founded by Alan Howard in 2002, built its reputation trading interest rates and currencies through a multi-manager macro structure rather than a single house view.

Multi-strategy and multi-manager platforms

These funds run many independent trading teams under one roof, each with its own strategy and risk limits, with the platform itself managing overall risk and capital allocation across teams. Citadel, founded by Ken Griffin in 1990, and Millennium Management, founded by Izzy Englander in 1989, are the two names most associated with this structure at scale, both running dozens of internal teams trading everything from equities to fixed income to commodities simultaneously. Point72, which Steve Cohen created in 2014 by converting SAC Capital into a family office after SAC's guilty plea for insider trading, reopened to outside investors in 2018 once an SEC supervisory bar expired, and runs on a similar multi-manager model.

Quantitative and systematic

Renaissance Technologies, founded by mathematician Jim Simons in 1982, is the most famous name in systematic trading, though its flagship Medallion fund has been reserved for employees since it bought out its last outside investors in 2005. Two Sigma, founded in 2001 by John Overdeck and David Siegel, and AQR Capital, founded in 1998 by Cliff Asness, both built their approach around statistical and factor-based models applied at scale, with AQR in particular known for publishing academic research alongside running client capital.

Activist

Activist funds take meaningful stakes in public companies specifically to push for change, whether that means board seats, a strategic sale, a spin-off, or a change in capital allocation, and they are the funds most associated with the Schedule 13D filings covered elsewhere on this site. Elliott Management, founded by Paul Singer in 1977, is one of the largest and most active, running campaigns across industries from technology to energy. Third Point, founded by Dan Loeb in 1995, built its reputation partly on unusually direct public letters to the management of companies it targets, making its 13D filings and shareholder letters worth reading beyond the raw position size.

Long/short equity

These funds take both long and short positions in individual stocks based on fundamental research, aiming to profit from the gap between winners and losers rather than from the market's overall direction. Tiger Global, run by Chase Coleman, is one of the best known descendants of Julian Robertson's original Tiger Management, part of a lineage of managers, often called Tiger Cubs, who trained under Robertson before starting their own funds using a similar research-driven, concentrated approach to picking both longs and shorts. Lone Pine Capital, founded by another Tiger alumnus, Steve Mandel, in 1997, follows a similar concentrated, research-intensive long/short model.

Credit and distressed

Credit funds focus on debt rather than equity, often specializing in situations other lenders are unwilling to touch: companies near or in bankruptcy, complex restructurings, or debt trading well below face value where the fund believes recovery will exceed the market price. Davidson Kempner Capital Management, founded by Marvin Davidson in 1983 and joined by Thomas Kempner the following year, is one of the longest-running names in this space, built around distressed debt and event-driven credit situations. These strategies tend to move differently from equity-focused funds during a downturn, since a company's bonds and its stock do not always react to bad news in the same way or on the same timeline.

Event-driven and merger arbitrage

Event-driven funds position around a specific corporate event, a merger, a spin-off, a bankruptcy, a regulatory decision, rather than a general view on a company or the market. Merger arbitrage, a subset of this, typically means buying the stock of a company being acquired at a discount to the announced deal price and profiting from that spread closing as the deal completes, with the main risk being that the deal breaks entirely. Paulson & Co, founded by John Paulson in 1994, built its early reputation on merger arbitrage before becoming far more widely known for a different, one-time trade: a concentrated bet against the US subprime mortgage market ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, the same trade covered from a different angle in the guide to hedge fund books on this site, which follows the investors profiled in Michael Lewis's The Big Short.

Convertible arbitrage

This strategy trades convertible bonds, debt that can convert into a set number of shares, against the underlying stock, aiming to profit from pricing gaps between the two rather than betting on the company's direction outright. Highbridge Capital Management, launched in 1992 by Glenn Dubin and Henry Swieca, started as a convertible arbitrage fund before growing into a multi-strategy firm. The strategy became badly overcrowded in the mid-2000s, with hedge funds by some estimates accounting for up to 75 percent of the convertible market. Then investors pulled more than a fifth of convertible arbitrage capital in the first quarter of 2005, and convertible bonds cheapened well below their theoretical value, an episode documented by Mark Mitchell, Lasse Pedersen and Todd Pulvino.

Even a strategy with a clear, logical edge can stop working once too much capital chases the same trade.

Why the strategy label matters more than the ranking

Knowing a fund's strategy tells you what kind of market conditions it is likely to do well or poorly in, which a raw size ranking never does. A global macro fund and a long/short equity fund can be similarly sized and behave nothing alike in a given year. For anyone who wants to check what any of these funds currently hold, rather than relying on a description, how to read their 13F filings is the more durable skill, since a filing shows the actual, current positions rather than a strategy description that may or may not still be accurate.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I find current, ranked assets under management for these funds?

Assets under management change constantly and rankings from even a few months ago are often already out of date. For a current snapshot, checking a live ranking source or the funds' own SEC filings directly is more reliable than any static list, including this one.

Can I invest in these hedge funds directly?

Almost certainly not without qualifying as an accredited investor, and most of the largest funds listed here are closed to new outside capital entirely or accept it only from existing institutional relationships. Retail investors generally cannot invest in a hedge fund directly regardless of accreditation status if the fund itself is not accepting new money.