Bridgewater Associates’ main fund achieved record-breaking performance, and D.E. Shaw & Co.’s strategies climbed up to 28%, placing them among the top-performing hedge funds in 2025, a year where market instability driven by tariffs created lucrative opportunities for traders.
According to an anonymous source discussing private data, Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha II macro fund gained 34% in the past year, marking its highest return ever, while its All Weather strategy increased by 20%. D.E. Shaw’s primary multistrategy Composite fund returned 18.5%, and its Oculus fund generated an estimated 28.2%.
A separate source indicated that Michel Massoud’s event-driven Melqart Opportunities Fund jumped 45%. Millennium Management, an $83.5 billion multistrategy firm, saw a 10.5% gain last year. ExodusPoint, which has been expanding its equities team to work alongside its fixed-income business under co-founder Michael Gelband, rose 18%, its best performance since its 2017 launch. The firm oversees approximately $12 billion.
Citadel’s flagship hedge fund increased by 10.2% in 2025, according to a person familiar with the situation who requested anonymity due to the private nature of the information. This was the first year since 2020 that Millennium’s returns exceeded those of Citadel’s Wellington fund.
Read More:
Preliminary figures indicate the hedge fund industry registered robust gains overall, with returns set to be the strongest in at least five years. This was aided by rising US equities, precious metals, and volatility in bond and currency markets resulting from President Donald Trump’s trade conflicts.
The 50-year-old firm Bridgewater reported double-digit gains across its various strategies. The asset manager has been undergoing a restructuring since Nir Bar Dea took over as the sole CEO in 2023, implementing extensive staff changes and reducing assets to improve results. Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of the Westport, Connecticut-based firm, has fully departed, having sold his remaining ownership stake and resigned from the board last year.
The strong performance of Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha II fund last year signifies a recovery from annualized returns that were below 3% between 2012 and 2024, as previously reported by Bloomberg. The source also mentioned that the firm’s AIA Labs fund, which relies primarily on machine learning for its decisions, has gathered over $5 billion and advanced 11% last year.
In the quantitative investing sector, AQR Capital Management’s multistrategy product delivered a 19.6% return in 2025, said a source who asked not to be named because the information is confidential.
Read More:
Based on initial estimates, the following shows how other hedge funds performed last year:
| Hedge Fund | Strategy | 2025 Return |
|---|---|---|
| Melqart Opportunities | Event-Driven | 45.1% |
| Bridgewater Asia | Macro | 37 |
| Discovery | Macro | 35.6 |
| Bridgewater Pure Alpha II | Macro | 34 |
| Bridgewater China | Macro | 34 |
| DE Shaw Oculus | Multistrategy | 28.2 |
| Soroban Opportunities | Equity Long/Short | 25 |
| AQR Adaptive | Quant Equity Market Neutral | 24.4 |
| Anson Investments Master | Equity | 21.2 |
| Bridgewater All Weather | Risk Parity | 20 |
| AQR Apex | Quant Multistrategy | 19.6 |
| Citadel Tactical Trading | Multistrategy | 18.6 |
| DE Shaw Composite | Multistrategy | 18.5 |
| Dymon | Multistrategy | 18.1 |
| ExodusPoint | Multistrategy | 18.04 |
| Kite Lake Special Opportunities | Event-Driven | 17.9 |
| AQR Delphi | Quant Equity Long/Short | 16.8 |
| Balyasny | Multistrategy | 16.7 |
| Schonfeld Fundamental Equity | Multimanager equity | 16.5 |
| Walleye | Multistrategy | 15.5 |
| Citadel Equities | Equities | 14.5 |
| LMR Partners | Multistrategy | 13.5 |
| Schonfeld Strategic Partners | Multistrategy | 12.5 |
| Marshall Wace | Eureka*/Equity Long/Short | 11.6 |
| Pinpoint Multi-Strategy | Multistrategy | 11.6 |
| Bridgewater AIA | Quant Macro | 11 |
| Taula | Macro | 11 |
| Millennium | Multistrategy | 10.5 |
| Citadel Wellington | Multistrategy | 10.2 |
| FIFTHDELTA | Equity | 10.3 |
| New Holland Tactical Alpha | Multistrategy | 9.8 |
| Citadel Global Fixed Income | Fixed Income | 9.4 |
| Winton | Quant multistrategy | 7.4 |
| Source: Bloomberg reporting | ||
| *as of Dec. 30 |
A spokesperson for Bridgewater, which had $92 billion in assets under management as of September, did not provide a comment. Massoud, who oversees around $1.4 billion, along with representatives for the other hedge funds listed in the table, also declined to comment.