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. D.E. Shaw’s flagship multistrategy Composite hedge fund gained 18.5% and Oculus made an estimated 28.2%.
Michel Massoud’s event-driven Melqart Opportunities Fund surged 45%, another person said. Millennium Management, the $83.5 billion multistrategy hedge fund firm, gained 10.5% last year. ExodusPoint, which has been building out its equities group to complement its fixed-income operations led by co-founder Michael Gelband, gained 18%, the most since its founding in 2017. The firm manages about $12 billion.
The initial estimates show hedge funds overall posted strong gains with industry returns on track to be the best in at least five years as surging US stocks, precious metals and volatility in bond and currency markets spurred by President Donald Trump’s trade wars helped.
Bridgewater, the 50-year-old firm, posted double-digit returns across strategies. The money manager has been in reboot mode since Nir Bar Dea became sole chief executive officer in 2023 and made sweeping personnel changes and cut assets in a bid to boost performance. Westport, Connecticut-based Bridgewater’s billionaire founder, Ray Dalio, has completely exited the firm, selling his remaining stake and stepping down from the board last year.
Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha II fund’s gains last year represent a rebound from annualized returns of less than 3% between 2012 and 2024, Bloomberg has previously reported. The firm’s AIA Labs fund that uses machine learning as the primary basis of its decision-making, has raised more than $5 billion and was up 11% last year, the person added.
Here’s how other hedge funds fared last year based on initial estimates:
A representative for Bridgewater, which managed $92 billion as of September, declined to comment. Massoud, who manages about $1.4 billion, as well as representatives for the hedge funds mentioned in the table declined to comment.
Updates table with revised estimates for Schonfeld funds, adds returns for Balyasny, Dymon and a few more. A previous version corrected the year in the table.
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