Top 5 Richest Traders and Hedge Fund Managers of All Time

Top 5 Richest Traders and Hedge Fund Managers of All Time

The purpose of this article is to inspire you with Financial Guru’s achievements that had started with very little. With time and consistent effort, they carve their name among the most successful traders in the world. Al through the list varies with time, but these are the top 10 richest traders and hedge funds manager picks of FromMedia and if you would like to see your favorite hedge fund manager there, please do comment and we will expand the list.

1. James Simons with a Net worth of $21.6 billion

James Simons is also known as Quantum King due to his quantitative investment strategy. A billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist was the founder of Renaissance Technologies. Due to Renaissance fund success, he is also known as the greatest investor of Wall Street. His major contribution was in pattern recognition trading and quantum field theory. James was also a mathematics professor and chairman of the mathematics department of Stony Brook University.

He was named “The world’s smartest billionaire” by Financial Times in 2006 and also included in 50 most influential people in the Bloomberg Marketing Magazine in 2014. James was large donor to Nepalese Healthcare through Nick Simons Institute. He also donated $25 million to Stony Brook University which was the largest donation ever to a State University of New York in 2006. He also announced $60 million through Simons Foundation to fund the Simons Centre for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook.

Simon James

2. Ray Dalio with a Net worth of $18.7 billion

Ray Dalio is famously known as “The King of Wall Street” due to his accolades. He is the founder and co-chair of the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates worth $140 billion. His journey was actually very interesting as he started the above hedge fund company from his Manhattan apartment in 1975.

As a renowned philanthropist, he and his family joined Bill Gates foundation and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge to support charitable causes across the globe. He pledge $185 million dollars over a period of four years to Bloomberg Philanthropies foundation to support OceanX project. More famously he is also known for his bestselling books and paper “Principles” and “A Template for Understanding what is Happening Now”. He also predicted the global recession of 2008 by publishing paper in 2007.

Ray Dalio

3. Carl Icahn with a Net worth of $17.7 billion

Carl Icahn also known as the Wall Street guru beaten the U.S. stock market and outranked his fellow hedge funds managers. His investment pool generated more than 20% with most bets on Hain Celestial Group and CVR Energy. He is known as Businessman, Investor, and philanthropist due to his generous donations. This includes $200 million to Mount Sinai School of Medicine and $40 million to his Charter School in the Bronx. His investment portfolio includes Games, Cars, Technology, and energy. The popular stakes are in Netflix, Apple, Lyft, Paypal, Xerox, and many others including The Vanguard Group. His biography is well covered by Mark Stevens and Carol Bloom Stevens in his book “King Icahn: The Biography of a Renegade Capitalist

Carl Icahn

4. George Soros with a Net worth of $8.3 billion

George Soros who is also known as “The man who broke the bank of England” is famous due to his billion-dollar bet against sterling in 1992. He is a seasonal investor and philanthropist. He donated more than 32$ billion donations to his philanthropic agency that is known as Open Society Foundations.

This hedge fund legend started their career in the United Kingdom and later started his own hedge fund with 100,000$ of his own money and few investors. He was nominated No 1 in 2014 in LCH Investments.  Listed him of top 20 managers having gains of more than $42 billion since the start of Quantum of Endowment Fund in 1973. He was also on the front cover of Financial Times in 2016. His recent famous quote was “euro is here to stay”. He is also the open vocalist for the proponent of European integration.

Several books are under his belt with most famous “The Alchemy of Finance” and “The Crash of 2008 And What It Means: The New Paradigm For Financial Markets“.

George Soros


5. John Paulson with a Net worth of $4.2 billion

John Paulson who is famous for his “Big Short Trade” against subprime mortgage securities is a renowned hedge fund manager. He leads Paulson & Co., a hedge fund based in NYC and also known as “a man who made one of the biggest fortunes in Wall Street history” due to Big Short Trade.

His main trading strategy was event driven and made fortunes on company’s mergers, acquisitions, proxy contests and spin off. He Paulson was also renewed for philanthropy work and donated 8.5$ million to NYC largest charter school. He also donated $15 million to build a children’s hospital in Ecuador and £2.5 million to London school of Economics.

John Paulson