2024 Trading World Champion Rankings

Rob Citrone returned 52% at Discovery Capital Management in 2024, the strongest result among global macro hedge funds and one of the most impressive risk-adjusted performances of the year at any scale. A Julian Robertson protégé and original Tiger Cub, Citrone founded Discovery in 1999 and has built one of the most consistent macro track records in the industry.

The defining trade of Citrone's 2024 was Argentina. He went in early on Milei's free-market reforms when most institutional money stayed away, taking significant positions in Argentine government bonds and equities. His stake in Grupo Financiero Galicia SA paid off as the stock surged over 260%. But Argentina wasn't the whole story — Discovery's short book and cross-asset macro positions across rates, currencies, and credit all contributed independently.

Citrone trades macro in the truest sense: top-down analysis of economies, central banks, and political inflection points, expressed through whatever instruments give the best risk/reward. He's comfortable in sovereign debt, corporate credit, equities, and currencies simultaneously. The Argentina trade used all of them.

His personal earnings of approximately $730 million placed him ninth on the industry's highest-earner list in 2024 — ahead of managers running funds many times Discovery's size. A 52% macro return requires being right about big, uncertain things. That's the hardest kind of trading there is. Full article »

Glen Kacher's Light Street Capital returned 59.4% in 2024, the highest raw percentage among major hedge funds tracked by industry publications. A Tiger "grandcub" running a technology-focused long/short strategy, Kacher built an "AI5 basket" of semiconductor and AI-infrastructure names — Nvidia, TSMC, Meta, AMD, Broadcom — that captured the year's dominant trend. The short book contributed additional alpha on top of the long positions.

Kacher's percentage return was actually higher than Citrone's, but our ranking weighs the nature of the returns. Light Street's gains came primarily from concentrated long positions in the best-performing sector of a rising market. That's excellent stock-picking, but it's a different kind of difficulty than macro trading across asset classes in uncertain environments. Light Street followed this with 37.3% in 2023 and added another strong year in 2025 — making Kacher one of the most consistent high performers in the hedge fund industry over a three-year stretch.

Chris Rokos returned 31% at Rokos Capital Management in 2024, an exceptional number on more than $22 billion in assets under management. The former Brevan Howard co-founder specializes in rates and global macro, and his positioning around the US presidential election reportedly generated approximately $1 billion in gains alone. On a fund this size, 31% translates to roughly $6-7 billion in investor profits.

Rokos ranks third because of the combination of return magnitude and capital at risk. Very few traders in the world generate 30%+ returns managing this much money. He followed this with another 21% in 2025, making back-to-back years that put him in rarefied company among institutional macro traders. His former firm Brevan Howard continues to lag well behind — a comparison the industry never tires of making.

Darren O'Neill, the 2023 Trading World Champion, posted strong multi-asset returns in 2024, trading across equity index futures, commodities, and currencies. His diversified approach and risk management through a volatile election year earned him recognition on the 2024 list.

O'Neill is the founder of Vector Ridge and first competed in the World Trading Championship in 2025, where he posted multiple top-five finishes across divisions. In a year dominated by concentrated bets on AI and Argentina, his balanced multi-asset performance stood out for its breadth rather than any single outsized position.

Dan Loeb returned 25.6% at Third Point in 2024, driven by concentrated equity positions in Meta Platforms, Amazon, Vistra, and TSMC combined with a significant credit allocation (nearly 38% net exposure) that added steady returns throughout the year. Loeb's event-driven approach — identifying catalysts that will move stocks independent of broad market direction — is one of the most proven strategies in hedge fund history.

Third Point has been one of the more durable names in the industry, running since 1995 with Loeb maintaining an activist edge that gives him influence over the companies he invests in. His 2024 was particularly notable for the diversity of sources — tech equities, credit, and private investments all contributed — suggesting this was a well-constructed portfolio rather than a single-bet year.