• Ken Griffin said foreign students should be given visas when they graduate from US colleges.
• "The key is they need to stay here," Griffin said.
• President Donald Trump said in June that foreign graduates should get green cards automatically.

Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin said foreign students in the US should be handed visas when they graduate from universities.

"The key is they need to stay here," Griffin said at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Wednesday. "Right, that's the key, and we are not doing enough to make access to staying in America either easy or preferred for so many of these students."

"It should literally be if you graduate from one of America's great universities, great graduate schools, you should just get a visa stamp to your degree," Griffin added.

Griffin's suggestion is similar to what President Donald Trump had proposed while he was out on the campaign trail last year. Trump said foreign students should be given permanent residency after they graduate from US colleges.

"What I want to do and what I will do is, you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma a green card to be able to stay in this country, and that includes junior colleges too," Trump said in an episode of the "All-In" podcast which aired in June.

This isn't the first time Griffin has called on the Trump administration to keep the US open to the best and brightest worldwide.

In November, Griffin spoke at the Economic Club of New York, where he said that while America's southern borders needed to be secured, the country also needed to have a "thoughtful" immigration policy.

"I'd like to see Washington now execute an immigration policy that is thoughtful, that protects this nation's great stature in the world of being the country you come to pursue your dreams," Griffin said.

During his first term, Trump targeted the H-1B visa program, which is granted to skilled foreign workers in the US. In June 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the president ordered a freeze on several visa programs, including the H-1B.

The H-1B visa program is popular with tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. In the US, up to 85,000 foreign workers are hired annually under the H-1B program.

But in December, Trump told the New York Post that he supports the H-1B visa program, adding that he "always liked the visas."

"I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I have been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great program," Trump said.

Representatives for Griffin at Citadel did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Citadel's Ken Griffin said he doesn't think AI will shake up the investment business.
• Griffin said his hedge fund uses AI "a little bit."
• AI works well in short-term trading but falls short when making long-term bets, Griffin said.

Ken Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel, said he doesn't think AI will revolutionize the investment business.

"Do we use it in our investment business? A little bit, a little bit. I can't say it's been game-changing," Griffin said in an interview that was published on the Stanford Graduate School of Business' YouTube channel on Thursday.

Griffin was speaking to students as part of Stanford's "View From The Top" interview series when he was asked how AI will affect Citadel.

"It saves some time. It's a productivity enhancement tool. It's nice, I don't think it's going to revolutionize most of what we do in finance," Griffin added.

Griffin said generative AI models do not lend themselves well to investment analysis because they cannot make long-term forecasts.

"So machine learning models work really well with problems that are more static in nature. Reading a radiological report. But investing is about understanding how the future is going to unfold, and that's where these models really struggle, right?" Griffin said.

"They work great in short-term trading, and short-term, I mean as in like the next five minutes. But when you think about the next year or two years, they really start to fall apart," he continued.

To be sure, Griffin did not brush aside the impact AI could have on the world at large. In the interview, Griffin said AI is "going to change the world around you in a lot of profound ways." He cited jobs such as working at a call center or translating documents disappearing as AI begins to take over these tasks.

"So machine learning is going to come with a cost to society, a cost that we need to understand. How do we help these people land on their feet so we don't end up with a backlash against AI and machine learning," Griffin said.

Griffin's view of AI in his industry contrasts with that of many business leaders across industries, from e-commerce and retail to tech and banking. JPMorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon has been more bullish on the impact of AI on his bank's operations.

In April 2024, Dimon wrote in his annual letter to shareholders that JPMorgan envisions having generative AI "reimagine entire business workflows."

"While we do not know the full effect or the precise rate at which AI will change our business — or how it will affect society at large — we are completely convinced the consequences will be extraordinary and possibly as transformational as some of the major technological inventions of the past several hundred years," Dimon wrote.

Representatives for Griffin at Citadel did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Citadel, Millennium, Point72, and more made money in April.
• Markets were rattled at the start of last month by President Donald Trump's tariff policies.
• Stocks eventually settled, though the S&P 500 was still down in April.

Ken Griffin advised investors navigating last month's markets to "tread water and not drown."

The legions of portfolio managers who work for his $65 billion firm and its rivals managed to do better than that.

Griffin's flagship fund at Citadel, Wellington, was up 1.3% last month, bringing its 2025 returns to 0.5%, a person close to the Miami-based firm said. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the fund's returns.

Big-name funds like Millennium, Point72, Balyasny, and ExodusPoint also logged solid gains in April, people close to the managers said. ExodusPoint, the New York-based manager run by Michael Gelband, is atop the leaderboard among the large multistrategy funds for the month with a 2.8% return.

Citadel's other funds, which focus on specific asset classes, were also up last month, the person said, led by the manager's equities strategy, which made 2.2% in April. That strategy is now up 0.5% for the year.

Meanwhile, the firm's global fixed income fund has generated returns of 4.6% through April after a 1.2% gain last month, the person said. The firm's tactical trading fund, which combines the firm's fundamental equity and quant strategies, is up 3.2% in 2025 after a 1.9% gain in April.

The strong performance was a reversal from March and February, when Citadel and Millennium uncharacteristically lost money in back-to-back months.

Still, last month was another rocky one in markets, as Griffin's comments at a Semafor conference in Washington, DC, made clear. President Donald Trump's tariff policies, revealed early in April on "Liberation Day," upended global trade.

His administration has paused some of the tariffs, and stocks rebounded, though the S&P 500 still finished the month down 0.8%. For the year, the index is down more than 5%, shedding trillions in value.

Multistrategy funds, known for their ability to generate returns in all market environments, have largely handled the volatility well, though some of the biggest names in the sector have trailed smaller rivals so far this year.

The firms mentioned declined to comment. The table below will be updated as more performance figures are learned.

• Citadel CEO Ken Griffin gave President Donald Trump a "mixed" review for his first 100 days.
• Griffin has repeatedly expressed unease with Trump's tariffs.
• The billionaire said on Wednesday that Trump's policies are putting the US "brand" at risk.

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin said President Donald Trump's trade war is killing Wall Street's animal spirits vibes and tarnishing the US brand more broadly.

"How does Canada feel about our country today versus two months ago?" Griffin said during an interview at Semafor's World Economy Summit in Washington. "How does Europe feel about the United States today versus two months ago? "

Griffin said that Trump's actions have unnerved financial markets and weakened confidence in US Treasuries, "eroding" the most powerful brand.

"We put that brand at risk," he told Semafor senior editor Gina Chon. "And, as you and I both know, it could take a very long time to remove the tarnish from the brand."

On April 9, Trump announced a 90-day pause on most of his "reciprocal tariffs" after financial and bond markets were roiled for a week after his announcement. The White House said it has continued to impose high tariffs on China because, unlike other countries, Beijing retaliated to the president's move.

Griffin said he took solace in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's signals that the US and China may be able to work out a trade deal. Bessent said on Thursday that there's an "opportunity for a big deal," optimism that reverberated in trading.

As of midday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 are up slightly.

Griffin said overall, Trump's first 100 days have been "mixed." The billionaire praised the White House's quick action on immigration, removing diversity requirements, and pushing European allies to pay more for their defense. Griffin said the speed of Trump's moves has led to "some missteps."

"We're moving too quickly, we're moving too haphazardly, and we're breaking a lot of glass in trying to solve problems these very real problems," he said.

One of the Republican Party's biggest donors, Griffin supported former UN ambassador Nikki Haley in the 2024 GOP presidential primary. He gave Trump positive marks for immigration, removing diversity requirements and pushing European allies to pay more for their defense.

Like some others on Wall Street, Griffin reacted positively to Trump's win. But Griffin said Trump's trade policies are reducing the once vibrant optimism.

"I think all of us we're looking forward to four years to really grow our businesses," Griffin said. "Unfortunately, the trade war, which has devolved into a nonsensical place, means we're spending time thinking about supply chains, thinking about strategically how we're going to source goods around the world."

It should be a good time to work for the biggest hedge funds in the world.

Firms like Millennium, Citadel, Point72, and Balyasny are experiencing rapid growth and offering eye-popping pay packages, which can reach tens of millions of dollars for the most sought-after risk-takers.

Investors in hedge funds came into the year the most optimistic they'd ever been, thanks to strong performance in 2024, Goldman Sachs says.

Market wild cards like the new US administration, artificial intelligence advances, and shifting global interest rates should give savvy hedge fund traders plenty of opportunities to stand out.

The biggest managers have the latest technology, advanced risk systems, reams of market data, and significant budgets to hire a team of top analysts. The downside? They offer nearly zero job security.

Millennium, Point72, Citadel, and Balyasny are the Big Four of the hedge fund conglomerates known as multistrategy firms, or sometimes "pod shops," that blend a variety of investment strategies within a single fund. As those four firms have grown their head counts, assets, and brands, their recruiting purview has expanded as well. Firms once content to poach young talent from private equity's ranks or business school graduating classes are now competing with banks and top tech firms for undergraduate interns.

At a time when the idea of a career of big trades and even bigger paychecks might seem more appealing than ever, Business Insider is taking a closer look at what it's like to work at an elite hedge fund. This is the second story in a series exploring how finance career pathways are changing and the impact on young people.

In a world where these firms are being compared against investment banks, the biggest hedge funds are a throwback to a time when Wall Street pros ate what they killed — and went hungry if they didn't succeed.

These firms can be quick to cut people who aren't adding to the bottom line. The annual churn of people who manage money at the Big Four was roughly 20% last year, according to the alternative data provider Revelio Labs.

The selling point for these investing conglomerates to external investors is not an individual money manager or a specific strategy but the sum of the firm's components, especially the risk management systems. One investor in hedge funds described these firms as "skill factories" that could overcome the loss of any individual team.

Churn is driven by firms poaching rivals' star performers and culling internal underperformers. The shuffling of people in and out of these coveted seats is a feature of the model, not a bug.

"These aren't places to build a career usually," said one former portfolio manager who has worked at several of the biggest multistrategy hedge fund firms.

"It's a place to survive and get paid while you can," they added, "because you don't know when things will turn against you."

Butterflies, good and bad

To play in the "majors," aka the Big Four, which employ roughly seven out of every 10 investment professionals among all multistrategy hedge funds, you need plenty of technical and interpersonal skills to even be considered. But an iron stomach might be the most critical.

When markets turn against you — and they always do, at some point — even the best people managing money get "butterflies, and not the good kind," one portfolio manager told BI. It's why top funds employ performance coaches. Zyn pouches and receding hairlines are omnipresent on hedge fund trading floors, too.

Losses as little as 5% of an investment portfolio in a week can result in a pink slip, and the scale of the biggest firms gives them a close to unlimited budget to recruit external talent to replace those who lose money.

"Not losing money in volatility events is a really important part of investing at a pod shop," said Brett Caughran, a former portfolio manager for Citadel, Schonfeld, D.E. Shaw, and Maverick, who founded the multistrategy-focused training firm Fundamental Edge.

Caughran tries to stress to those signing up for his training that working at a multistrategy firm means "there's a moment-by-moment paranoia about the systematic risks in my portfolio."

Compared with firms with longer investment time horizons, where he said people could ride out short-term volatility, a hypothetical Millennium portfolio manager is playing a "batting average game" focused on diversified, smaller bets. Concentrated firms, such as Bill Ackman's Pershing Square, are looking for a few home runs, but a Millennium PM wants to hit singles more often than not.

"Some people are more temperamentally aligned with that, and if you can nail that type of investing, there are great rewards for it," he said.

Smart people with plenty of career options might have underlying motives for being attracted to such a high-stress environment, but the universal draw is the paycheck.

Despite the proliferation of portfolio managers in the past decade thanks to the growth of multistrategy hedge funds, these jobs are still rare and come with serious pay packages, such as a bonus that can be up to 25% of your portfolio's gains for yourself and your team.

If you make 20% in a $1 billion portfolio in a year, for example, that could mean a $50 million bonus to distribute between your small team of analysts and yourself, on top of a guaranteed six-figure salary.

There's also a mix of competitiveness and ego that drives people to take jobs at the biggest of firms. The industry has been glamorized in shows like "Billions," which is loosely based on one of the Big Four founders, Point72's Steve Cohen, and attracts type A personalities who thrive on constant competition.

As one multistrategy executive told BI, when the calendar flips to a new year, "everyone's at zero again — and no one cares what you did last year, last month, or last week."

"It's a what-have-you-done-for-me-today-type industry," he said.

Despite the self-belief needed to play in the majors, don't expect any self-respecting portfolio manager to brag about a good run around the office. In the same manner that pitchers in the midst of a no-hitter don't acknowledge it, PMs are similarly superstitious.

"It's almost like a euphoric feeling" when reality matches with your research and strategy, another portfolio manager told BI.

"You always have to consciously suppress it," this person said, and stay even-keeled.

A shift to more stable teams?

"Ten to 20% is normal" churn for portfolio managers at a multimanager platform, said Justin Young, director of investments at Multilateral Endowment Management Company, a hedge-fund investor in Oklahoma that manages assets for Oklahoma State University's endowment and other institutions.

"You'd expect 15 to 20% of PMs to have a bad year," he said.

Several industry experts, however, said a structural shift might be underway that could result in less turnover. The biggest hedge funds are moving away from legions of PMs to broader teams that can run more capital, and turnover will likely lessen.

One business development executive at a multistrategy firm — who is tasked with recruiting investing talent to join their fund — said a recent industry focus had been on combining investing teams and scaling the amount of capital the combined entity runs. Millennium, for example, now has its portfolio managers reporting to a senior portfolio manager, who often oversees several investors in larger teams.

The more money in the portfolio and the higher the head count, the less likely a tough quarter leads to a cut, Caughran said.

"Teams are now 10, 15, 20 people — they're not cutting those teams when they're down 2%," he said.

Funds might be pushed toward such a strategy by the next generation of talent. The business development executive said young finance professionals working in banking were less interested in hedge funds than they once were.

At Yale's business school, those involved in the investment management club — students you'd think would be ideal candidates to work at a large multistrategy fund — are more interested in longer-term investing strategies run by places like venture capital firms or hedge funds like those associated with the late investor Julian Robertson, known as the Tiger Cubs, said Victor Ocampo, the club's president.

Ocampo said the constraints of working at some of the biggest names in hedge funds were often "too strict," especially given their demand for market-beating returns.

"I'm the person who they're going to fire if it doesn't work," said Ocampo, who worked previously as a portfolio manager for the Latin American investment firm Sura Asset Management

To be sure, while there might be anecdotes of young people becoming uninterested in firms modeled like the Big Four, the data show that these funds are still a big draw. Last year, Citadel and Citadel Securities, the market-making business also founded by Ken Griffin, received more than 85,000 applications for its internship slots, a more than 30% bump from 2023.

Ilana Weinstein, a longtime industry recruiter who runs The IDW Group, said she advises her clients to ask large multistrategy funds what percentage of the investing team is homegrown.

"If a firm can say the majority, that tells you what you need to know about allowing for some footfalls and giving you the chance to succeed," she said. "Not all multimanagers are created equal."

These managers, Weinstein said, do not want to cut people indiscriminately. Point72, Citadel, and Balyasny have built out internship and training programs to develop more investing and technical talent in-house. Millennium partners with UBS, where young hires spend a year learning entry-level skills at the investment bank before starting at the hedge fund.

These firms naturally have a vested interest in seeing these younger pros grow into success stories at their firms instead of rivals.

"They put so much effort into recruiting talent and then developing," Weinstein. "They want to see a return on their investment and give these people time to adjust."

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• Former executives from Citadel, Millennium, and Point72 are in senior positions across the industry.
• The leading firms have become a pool of talent for smaller rivals to poach from.
• Managers such as Walleye, Capula, Fortress, Jain Global, and more have hired alums of the biggest funds.

As Dmitry Balyasny thought about the next stage of his eponymous firm's evolution and the leaders to shepherd it, he wanted someone who had been there before.

Balyasny hired Millennium's one-time chief financial officer, Kevin Byrne, as its chief operating officer last summer. This move brought on one of the few people who can say they know what it's like to work in the C-suite of a large multistrategy firm. Byrne had been among the leadership of Izzy Englander's firm when it was roughly the size of $23 billion Balyasny today.

For those in charge of smaller multistrategy funds, the place to find the talent to take you to the next level is obvious: the three biggest firms in the sector, Englander's Millennium, Ken Griffin's Citadel, and Steve Cohen's Point72.

The three firms, which manage more than $180 billion combined and employ more than 10,000 people, have become the recruiting grounds for firms in need of experienced executives in the same way that Julian Robertson's Tiger Management was once the launching pad for aspiring fund founders.

It's another example of the institutional qualities of the top tier of the $4.5 trillion industry. Decades ago — when a hedge fund would have felt crowded with more than 100 people on staff — banks, consulting firms, law firms, and accounting giants served as feeders for hedge funds looking to fill out their executive ranks.

No one could say they knew what it takes to run a multistrategy firm with tens of billions in capital because it had never been done. Now that's changed, and those involved with the day-to-day management of the biggest firms in the industry have become hot commodities for those hoping to break into the top tier.

"When you sit in those circles, when you sit on those committees, you learn about how to run this kind of business," said John Pierson, an industry recruiter who founded P2 Investments.

"They want that DNA, that top .0001% DNA, from the top shops," he said, referring to the biggest multistrategy firms.

The names

The firms tapping into this talent include upstart platforms like Walleye, new launches like Jain Global, and established managers hoping to carve out their own spot in the multistrategy sector like Capula. And for those who leave Millennium, Citadel, and Point72, it's often for jobs and titles that give them more responsibility and runway, Pierson said.

"It's all about control and creation," he said.

While many of these roles are filled by people who made their name in the industry because of their investing chops — and a select few do still trade a book — the real value from these individuals comes from their managerial or business-building abilities.

And titles can be deceiving. Chief investment officers and strategy heads at most platforms do not run a portfolio themselves, but instead manage, recruit, and train legions of investors beneath them.

Below is a rundown of some names and roles that fit the bill. The story continues below the table. Those with an asterisk next to their name have worked at several different firms, often other multistrategy hedge funds, since leaving one of the three big platforms.

These three managers have also been the place where many founders of new multistrategy firms — which require more boardroom tact than market savviness from their leaders — have been groomed. Millennium spawned the industry's two biggest platform launches: Michael Gelband's ExodusPoint and Bobby Jain's Jain Global.

Englander's former executives have also started two of Asia's biggest multistrategy launches: Jonathan Xiong's Singapore-based Arrowpoint Investment Partners and Kurt Baker's Hong Kong-based 30th Century Partners.

Equity-focused multimanager funds from Citadel alumni have vaccumed up billions in capital. Managers include Holocene Advisors, founded by Brandon Haley; Candlestick Capital, founded by Jack Woodruff; Woodline Partners, cofounded by Michael Rockefeller and Karl Kroeker; Cinctive Capital, cofounded by Richard Schimel and Larry Sapanski; and, most recently, Freestone Grove Partners, founded by Todd Barker. Additionally, Dymon Asia cofounder Danny Yong was once Citadel's top Asia executive before starting his own firm.

Two former executives from Cohen's umbrella, Doug Haynes and Tom Conheeney, have each tried to launch their own multi-strategies offering, but both were ultimately unable to get them off the ground. Still, Point72 executive Angus Wai launched Asia-based Polymer Capital in 2019.

Balyasny as a case study

There's a road map for founders tapping talent from Citadel, Millennium, and Point72 in the hopes of spurring their next wave of growth: Balyasny.

While it hasn't always been smooth, the Chicago-based fund has expanded significantly in recent years. At the end of a tough 2018 that resulted in dozens of layoffs, the manager had $6 billion in assets. It now runs $23 billion and has expanded into asset classes like commodities and geographies like Denmark and Dubai.

While Balyasny and his cofounders Taylor O'Malley and Scott Schroeder still lead the firm, with Balyasny himself recently taking on more control over the fund's stockpickers, the firm's executive ranks are littered with alums of its three larger rivals, including the aforementioned Byrne. In fact, the firm's past poaching of Citadel talent — which also included Runnfeldt and Giannini — sparked a mini turf war between Griffin and Balyasny years ago.

Current Balyasny executives from Citadel, Millennium, and Point72 include:

• Alex Lurye, former chief risk officer for Citadel, who now sits in the same seat at Balyasny
• Steve Goldberg, one-time senior portfolio manager at Citadel, who coheads the fixed-income and macro investing teams at Balyasny
• Francine Fang, once the deputy head of investments for Cohen's quant unit Cubist, who currently is Balyasny's global head of systematic
• Bill Wappler, a former Point72 research executive, who is a partner and director of research at Balyasny
• Gappy Paleologo, an alum of Millennium and Citadel, who is Balyasny's new global head of quantitative research
• Peter Goodwin, a one-time star PM for Point72, who is running his own unit, Longaeva Partners, within Balyasny
• Thomas Stephens, a former PM for Millennium and Citadel, who is the senior managing director of stock-picking unit Corbets Capital
• Steve Schurr, a Point72 portfolio manager before joining Balyasny, who is a senior managing director of fundamental equities
• Joe Lanzillotti, a one-time controller at Millennium, who is Balyasny's deputy CFO
• Anita Nassar, once a partner at Citadel, who is the global head of the client relations group for Balyasny
• Joe Snodgrass, the former spokesperson for Millennium, who is the chief communications officer at Balyasny

As Citadel and Point72 return capital and Englander considers selling a stake in Millennium, Balyasny has positioned itself as not just a rival to the three biggest firms, but a legitimate peer.

One point of proof is that smaller multi-strategy funds, as well as the biggest in the industry, are hiring Balyasny alums to be leaders.

Walleye, for instance, named former Balyasny PM Anil Gondi the firm's head of long-short equity last year, and Daylamani and Runnfeldt worked in leadership roles at Balyasny before joining Engineers Gate and Fortress, respectively. Schonfeld's co-heads of its macro and fixed-income investing unit, Colin Lancaster and Mitesh Parikh, both traded for Balyasny before starting their own firm and eventually joining Schonfeld.

Jared Hade, meanwhile, will start as Point72's chief financial officer in the second half of the year after spending close to 20 years at Balyasny.

"The big three," as one industry recruiter put it, "is now the big four."

• President Donald Trump's tariff policies have vaporized trillions of dollars from the stock market.
• Those most affected are huge stockholders like billionaires, many of whom once supported the president.
• They are now turning on him, as stocks are down close to 10% in April already.

Maybe the animal spirits need to be leashed.

The tariffs announced by President Donald Trump last week have tanked global stock markets, hitting the world's richest the hardest.

Billionaires, including big supporters of Trump, have seen their net worths and investment portfolios plummet during the market sell-off.

Hedge fund managers such as Third Point's Dan Loeb and Pershing Square's Bill Ackman have been critical of the tariffs, with Ackman pushing for a 90-day pause on X.

Months after saying that people who are worried about the economic impacts of tariffs should "get over it," JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon wrote in his annual letter published Monday that "America First is fine, as long as it doesn't end up being America alone," and warned that tariffs will slow the economy down.

Billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller, whom Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent worked under, posted on X in November that his former employee "is innovative in a calm, thoughtful way that will be disruptive but not rattle markets." On Sunday, as recession predictions became commonplace among economists, Druckenmiller made clear he differs from his former protégé, writing that he does not "support tariffs exceeding 10%."

A pair of Republican billionaires named Ken — Langone and Griffin, founders of Home Depot and Citadel, respectively — are frustrated with the rollout.

Langone told the Financial Times that he doesn't "understand the goddamn formula" used to create the specific rates for each country, while Griffin — whose vaunted flagship fund has lost money the last two months — called them a "huge policy mistake" in a talk at the University of Miami Monday night.

The reversal of opinion of the world's wealthiest is no shock. Former President Joe Biden, for example, enjoyed the support of big names in Wall Street and Silicon Valley before the relationship soured, thanks in part to the policies and focuses of former SEC chair Gary Gensler and former FTC chair Lina Khan.

Trump himself has veered between love and hate with the elite of his hometown during his decade in politics, with the most recent lull paling in comparison to how companies and donors fled from him following the January 6 insurrection attempt four years ago.

But this feels different because, according to six different investors trying (and mostly failing) to trade these markets, they're all powerless. A company's fundamentals do not matter now, only whatever comes out of Washington, which led to one trader "getting my face ripped off" by their short bet today.

This individual's bet backfired because the market briefly spiked at a false rumor of a reprieve from the tariffs. The White House denied any pause was coming, with Trump instead threatening even higher tariffs against China, which has shown no sign of yielding.

The Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece, the People's Daily, wrote on Sunday that "the more pressure we get, the stronger we become," and some investors are starting to bet on them over the US.

Speaking on "Liberation Day" at a conference put on by technology lobbying group Information Technology Industry Council, David McCormick, the junior senator from Pennsylvania and one-time CEO of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, said he has spoken to many in his old line of work who are "long China and short America."

Following the release of Chinese AI darling DeepSeek's models in January, McCormick, a Republican who is married to former Trump advisor and Goldman Sachs alum Dina Powell, said some of the so-called smart money is betting on the US losing the AI race — but he isn't.

"I'm long America, and I'm short China," he said, "but it depends on what we do. It's in our hands, and we can mess it up."

Emmalyse Brownstein contributed reporting.

• Billionaire Citadel founder Ken Griffin returned to his Florida high school on Tuesday.
• He spoke about his "Call of Duty" addiction and bombing his chem exam.
• He also gave them advice on getting a job, learning to communicate, and much more.

Billionaire Ken Griffin has been raising the profile of Florida since 2022 when he announced plans to move his hedge fund and trading empire to Miami, where they are now headquartered.

His companies, Citadel and Citadel Securities, are building a new 54-story headquarters building in Miami's Brickell neighborhood. Last year, the Citadel CEO donated $50 million to the University of Miami's Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer. He's also been making political allies in the state.

In the latest show of his dedication to the Sunshine State, Griffin on Tuesday went to Boca Raton High School, his alma mater, to speak to students about his education and career journey. The roughly one-hour conversation was moderated by Renen Antonacci, a senior who reached out to Ken with the invitation.

With his mother and sister in the audience, Griffin shared some of the lessons he's learned as a businessman and leader, as well as the top qualities he looks for in entry-level employees. He advised young people to put down their phones and learn to communicate. He also got personal, opening up about the teacher who helped him learn to write and the "thousands of hours" he has spent playing the video game "Call of Duty" (he blamed the habit on his sister).

Here are the highlights of the school's wide-ranging "fireside chat" with Griffin, according to a transcript of the conversation obtained by Business Insider.

Ken's early years

When asked if he would have done anything different with his high school career, Griffin recalled the time he bombed on his organic chemistry exam, and the teacher gathered the students around his desk to use it as a teaching moment.

"I had to work through some emotional damage from that," he joked.

"In all seriousness, though, you don't want to go through life thinking about regret," he said, adding, "If there was a challenge where you fell short, learn from it, but don't dwell on it."

He credited his mom, who was sitting in the front row, with demanding that he finish college, and he gave a shoutout to his high school English teacher, Kathryn Lindgren, for tutoring him in writing.

"She was an incredibly important part of my life story. I was a freshman, and after several weeks, she took me aside — she was my English teacher — and said, 'I've heard from the other teachers that you're pretty good at math and science, but you don't know how to write.'"

Griffin said Lindgren took it upon herself to tutor him in writing for the next two years, he said, adding, "It changed my life."

On technology

At one point, the moderator asked Griffin about his love of the popular video game "Call of Duty," and he acknowledged that he's been a fan for 15 years.

"My sister is in the front row of this audience, and she is the one who convinced me to play the game. She was a diehard, and she told me, you've got to play this game and it has now taken up thousands of hours of my life," he said.

At the same time, he encouraged the students to put the technology away so they can practice their interpersonal communication skills.

"You're not going to find many successful people in politics, public service, or business who are masters in text messaging," he said, adding, "It's the person who can command a room — that can lead a conversation and comfortably engage with someone in front of or behind a desk. Interpersonal skills are very important, and they have been deemphasized in the age of technology."

"Turn your phone off. See your friends, don't text your friends," he said.

Getting an education

Griffin advised students to use their college years wisely, saying that higher education is where you "learn how to learn." He also suggested they use college to broaden their horizons.

"What's amazing is many of you in this room are certain about what you're going to do. And I'm going to tell you this, you're almost certainly wrong," he said before sharing his own experience.

"In college, I was planning to go into private equity," he said.

He also suggested they give back by tutoring less advantaged students, which he said he did in his 20s in Chicago.

"Everybody in this room should tutor a young man or woman, and in particular, in an inner-city school, to see the education crisis we have in America," he said.

What he looks for in Citadel applicants

Griffin said communication is key for any job candidate.

"When I started my career, the person who was my primary provider of capital had a plaque in his office that said, 'If we're all going to eat, someone has to sell.'"

"Number one, we look for intellect, aptitude, and communication skills," he said. Grit, perseverance, and determination are among the other traits he mentioned.

"The bottom line is that no matter what you do, you're going to face setbacks. People who are resilient and learn from those setbacks move forward. People who are not fall by the wayside."

He also spoke about the importance of problem-solving.

"It's important to recognize that society rewards problem solvers. If you want to have a set of skills that you're really good at, solving problems should be high on the list," he said.

"Let's be clear, raise your hand in this room if you have a smartphone. Are you angry at the companies that created that technology? No. Great businesses create products that consumers value. This is often lost in the anti-capitalist rhetoric in America," he said, adding, "I enjoy living a life where there are great companies run by teams of people who enjoy solving the problems that I face in day-to-day life."

• Millennium Management and Citadel were down 1.2% and 0.5%, respectively, in March.
• Market volatility in March affected hedge funds, driven by the Trump administration's policies.
• Despite losses, some funds outperformed the S&P 500, which fell 4.6% in March.

It was another tough month for the biggest multistrategy hedge funds.

Izzy Englander's Millennium lost 1.2% in March, a person close to the $75 billion hedge fund told Business Insider, bringing its 2025 losses to 2%. Meanwhile, Ken Griffin's Citadel lost 0.5% over the month in its flagship Wellington fund, which is down 0.9% for the year.

March started turbulently for these big-name funds. Citadel, Millennium, Point72, Balyasny, and Schonfeld all lost money in the first few days due to the market volatility brought on by President Donald Trump's administration.

Markets since mellowed, however, and some managers clawed their way back.

$12 billion hedge fund Schonfeld ended March flat, paring back the losses from the start of the month, a person close to the New York-based firm said. The manager is up 2.2% for the year. Michael Gelband's ExodusPoint returned 0.7% in March, and is up 3.5% for the year.

While investors in these managers are not accustomed to losses, these funds still outperformed the S&P 500. The index had its worst quarter in years, finishing March down 4.6% thanks to serious slumps from mega stocks like Tesla and Nvidia.

Meanwhile, some smaller, more nimble multistrategy funds have taken advantage of the chaos.

Cliff Asness's AQR multistrategy fund, the $3 billion Apex fund, is up 9% for the year, after a 3.4% in March, a person close to the Greenwich-based manager said. Dymon Asia, which runs $3 billion and has teams based across different Asian and Middle East markets, was up 1.3% for the month and 2.8% for the year, a person close to the manager said.

While volatility has lessened in recent weeks, don't expect it to last: Trump has touted Tuesday as "Liberation Day" with serious tariffs threatened on goods imported from trade partners like China and Europe.

"Spoke to a lot of other fund managers this weekend," wrote Gavin Baker, the founder of Atreides Management, a crossover fund focused on tech and consumer companies, on X Monday.

"Many thought a crash was a realistic possibility, which I rarely hear. Probably the most negative on a forward-looking basis I have ever heard such a broad swath of investors in the last 25 years."

The firms listed either declined to comment or did not immediately return requests for comment. This list will be updated as more returns are learned.

• Top hedge funds such as Citadel and Millennium lost money in February, people familiar said.
• Geopolitical tensions brought on by President Donald Trump led to rocky markets last month.
• Some multistrategy rivals, including Balyasny, ExodusPoint, and Verition, still made money.

Some of the biggest hedge funds could not escape unscathed from the volatility brought on by the Trump administration in February.

Managers such as Ken Griffin's Citadel and Izzy Englander's Millennium lost money during the month, which was highlighted by constantly changing trade policy proposals from US leadership and shrinking consumer confidence.

The immediate effect of the geopolitical tensions and potential for a trade war — which research from the asset manager Amundi suggests is a bigger worry for investors than inflation or the deficit — has been a pullback on US equities.

Despite a jump in the last trading day of February, stocks were broadly down last month. The S&P 500 was down by 1.4% for February, bringing the index's 2025 returns to 1.2% through the year's first two months.

Still, several multistrategy funds — which have raised billions in recent years because of their ability to handle volatility — had strong months. Balyasny, which has overhauled its equities team, was up by roughly 0.9%, Michael Gelband's ExodusPoint returned 0.7%, and Verition made 0.6% last month, people close to the firms told Business Insider.

LMR Partners, based in London, was up by 1%, a person close to the firm said, bringing its 2025 returns up to 1.8%. Cliff Asness' $3 billion Apex strategy returned 2.8%, a person close to the manager said.

More firms will be added as returns are learned. The managers below declined to comment or did not immediately return requests for comment.

For years, it was common knowledge that smaller hedge funds outperformed larger peers.

Investors focused on finding up-and-coming managers before they made it big and raised billions. Big-name institutions like Blackstone and the Teacher Retirement System of Texas seeded new funds and sought out emerging managers. While there was safety and, typically, capacity in the biggest funds, there was alpha in unknown names.

This has all changed with the yearslong industry takeover by the biggest multistrategy firms. The big four — Millennium, Citadel, Point72, and Balyasny — have in recent years outperformed peers despite their ballooning sizes, dominated the fundraising environment even though they're mostly closed to new money, and turned the talent market on its head with eye-popping offers for investors.

For the first time, scale benefits both the manager and the LP, and the result is four managers with overwhelming clout. Business Insider talked to more than a dozen fund founders, allocators, and industry experts, such as top prime brokers and recruiters, to understand how smaller platforms plan to survive the unprecedented concentration of capital and talent and where allocators are turning in this new reality.

Goldman Sachs' prime brokerage desk, using regulatory filings, estimated in July that 53 multistrategy firms employed a total of 18,600 people. More than 71% of them worked for one of the big four, leaving the 49 other funds with a combined head count smaller than Millennium's.

Fundraising — which came easy for big and small platforms alike when interest rates were lower three years ago — is now a slog for many smaller multistrategy funds, several executives told Business Insider. The shift has cramped some firms' expansion plans that commenced during the boom times following the pandemic and put pressure on a business model that thrives with scale.

Meanwhile, Point72 and Citadel have returned capital to investors, and Millennium can command a five-year lockup period for new money, a term length previously unheard of in the hedge fund world. One allocator told BI that Point72, the $39 billion firm run by the billionaire New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, had a $9 billion waitlist — which is more capital than firms like Eisler and Walleye manage.

A different allocator compared the concentration of capital in the four largest firms to passive investing, in which all the assets flow to Vanguard, BlackRock, or State Street.

"For people who can't get into the top guys, they're saying they'll just invest in some other structure or asset class instead," this person said, pointing to private credit as a landing spot for some of this capital.

David vs. 4 Goliaths

The big four platforms have grown to a point where smaller rivals aren't battling another hedge fund — they're fighting with institutions.

"They're becoming more and more like investment banks to an extent," said one platform founder with less than $10 billion in total assets. Others in the industry likened Citadel in particular to pre-IPO Goldman Sachs — a comparison Ken Griffin would most likely welcome, given his laudatory comments about the firm.

A hypothetical $5 billion multistrategy manager has a much different existence than even the $21 billion firm Balyasny. One smaller platform executive hoping to grow said that, even as Citadel and Point72 returned capital to LPs, "it was a bitch last year raising money."

A February report from JPMorgan's capital advisory team said hedge funds with assets between $500 million and $5 billion had net outflows of $21.5 billion in the past two years, while firms with assets greater than $5 billion hauled in $12.2 billion in net new money.

Goldman Sachs' July report noted that allocators were starting to balk at the high costs required to run multistrategy firms. The trickle-down effect is that firms such as ExodusPoint have accepted a cash hurdle — where performance fees accrue only when returns surpass that of a Treasury bond — to appease antsy LPs. Despite the buzz around the launch of Jain Global, the firm raised billions less than it was expected to pull in.

Several smaller-platform executives said LPs were also worried about a platform unwind and what a significant market event could do to these firms, given that they operate with so much leverage.

With more capital in multistrategy funds than ever before, some market watchers have been sounding the alarm about the knock-on effects of this investing style. These funds use borrowed money to juice their bets, meaning any significant movement against their position can cause losses to accumulate quickly.

The risk-management systems of these platforms will often force their investors to shed positions quickly in the face of mounting losses, which can exacerbate a stock's decline. It's a market risk that Viking Global's chief investment officer, Justin Walsh, said he monitors closely and that the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, raised concerns about last month.

But now that scale has become necessary for those competing directly with the four biggest firms, any slowdown in growth can be fatal, and suddenly tepid allocators could cause a domino effect, a former hedge fund allocator said.

"Without capital, you can't get a diversity of return streams," they said. "Without a diversity of return streams, the model doesn't really make sense."

'Do you have a right to exist?'

Those that can't beat the biggest players at their own game need to offer something different.

"If you're going to compete with Citadel and Millennium in their own backyard, you're already dead," one person who's building out their multistrategy offering told BI.

They added, "Do you have a right to exist — or are you on borrowed time because you raised money when all multistrats could raise money?"

Matthew Barrett, the head of manager research at Kepler Partners, who works with allocators searching for funds, said smaller platforms must offer a "derivative" of the main models the big four have perfected.

For Dymon Asia, a $3 billion multistrategy fund with offices in Asia and the Middle East, the differentiator is geography.

At SummitTX, Crestline Investors' recently rebranded multistrategy fund, "what resonates is the alignment of the whole package," the firm's chief investment officer, Caroline Cooley, said. This includes fees, liquidity, transparency of positioning, and risk so that institutional investors have a more personalized setup.

Other midsize shops focus on investment opportunities that are more niche and wouldn't move the needle at the biggest platforms.

"They need PMs to run $2 billion to $4 billion and manage seven to nine people," said Rich Schimel, who cofounded the $3 billion firm Cinctive Capital and once ran a stock-picking unit at Citadel. "There are not a lot of people out there who can do that. Not efficiently, at least."

"It's a whole different model than ours," he said.

At his firm, he said, the focus is partially on "low-hanging fruit" in mid-cap stocks that are too small for the biggest funds, for example.

The Holy Grail, though, might be finding a way to offer multistrategy returns at a fraction of the price. The pass-through fee structures nearly everyone has adopted to keep up in the war for talent have LPs on the hook for billions in employee compensation.

Several allocators said a firm able to recreate multistrategy returns without relying on dozens of human portfolio managers would have plenty of backers. While Doug Haynes' Norias Research never ended up launching, reportedly because of an inability to raise sufficient capital, hedge fund LPs said his proposed firm's algorithm-driven and less-people-intensive structure made sense.

And gross returns from a manager like this could be muted compared with high-head-count peers and still come out on top.

"If a full pass-through fee is 10%," Barrett said, "you're already running at a significant head start."

The squeeze has already begun

Consolidation in top-heavy industries snowballs, and the multistrategy space is not immune.

While the Millennium-Schonfeld tie-up was called off in 2023, the big four platforms have warped the industry by bringing independent external funds in-house and spinning off new firms backed by the mother ship.

While there's optimism around hedge funds generally, a different Goldman report from last summer said that assets in the multistrategy industry had tapered off and that outflows outpaced performance gains through the first half of 2024. The talent pool can barely handle the big four, much less additional platforms hoping to replicate their models.

"There is definitely a difference between A talent and B talent, and you see it across different platforms," said Justin Young, the director of investments at Multilateral Endowment Management Company, an allocator that manages assets for Oklahoma State University's endowment and other institutions.

Even those on the smaller end of the spectrum acknowledge there will probably be fewer platforms going forward.

"Are there too many? There could be," one founder with under $10 billion in assets said. "There could be some consolidation."

• Billionaire Ken Griffin bought a duplex in Manhattan for $45 million.
• Griffin owns over a quarter billion of real estate in New York City alone.
• The seller, Julia Koch, had been trying to sell the condo for three years.

Hedgefund manager and billionaire Ken Griffin continues his real-estate conquest after buying a historically significant duplex in Manhattan for $45 million.

The Wall Street Journal reported Griffin bought the approximately 8,500-square-foot condo from Julia Koch, the widow of late billionaire David Koch, for $15 million under its original asking price.

The Kochs purchased the condo in 2004 for around $17 million, according to the Journal, and first listed it in 2022 with a starting price of $60 million. In 2023, it was listed for $48 million.

Griffin is the CEO of the highly profitable hedge fund Citadel and famously ditched Illinois for Florida in 2022. He owns multiple properties in NYC.

The history of 740 Park Ave.

Griffin's latest Manhattan purchase is a five-bedroom duplex at 740 Park Avenue

The condominium was built in 1930 by American lawyer, banker, and real estate investor James T. Lee, who was grandfather to former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She lived in the condominium as a child.

The building has been home to other notable tenants like John D. Rockefeller Jr. and former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The Citadel CEO also owns a penthouse about a mile and a half away from 740 Park Avenue, which he bought in 2019 for a record-setting $238 million.

Griffin, who has a net worth of $43.4 billion, according to Forbes as of February, has spent more than $280 million on real estate in New York City alone. His real-estate footprint has also traveled south recently.

Griffin's recent real-estate deals

Between 2020 and 2023, he spent close to $169 million on properties on Star Island, an exclusive neighborhood in Miami Beach.

In 2022, he purchased two bayfront houses in Coconut Grove, a neighborhood in Miami, for over $100 million.

And over the last decade, he accumulated 27 acres for about $450 million in Palm Beach.

He's also offloaded a few properties.

In late 2024, Griffin sold the top two floors of a Chicago condo building for $19 million — taking a 44% loss after buying them for a combined $34 million in 2017.

Julia Koch is also investing in NYC real-estate

The seller of the Manhattan condo, Julia Koch, is worth $74.2 billion, according to Forbes, and has been on her own real-estate-transaction spree in the last few years.

According to Mansion Global, she bought two Manhattan co-ops for $101 million in 2022.

The next year, she sold a townhouse in Manhattan for $41 million in an off-market deal after buying it for $40.25 million in 2018.

• Billionaire Ken Griffin, a key GOP donor, spoke Tuesday at a conference hosted by UBS outside Miami.
• Griffin, the founder of $65 billion hedge fund Citadel, was critical of the new administration's tariffs.
• Elon Musk's DOGE has his full support, though, and he thanked Musk "from the bottom of my heart."

Ken Griffin made sure to seek out a camera before answering the question.

Griffin — the billionaire founder of hedge fund Citadel and a key GOP donor — was asked about the work of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, which has angered members of Congress on both sides of the aisles with its pause on funding projects.

While staring at the camera filming the UBS Financial Services conference in Key Biscayne, Florida, Griffin thanked Musk "from the bottom of my heart."

"We need to take back the reins of government from the bureaucrats who only know how to spend our money," said Griffin, referring to corporate leaders who have decided to shift their focus from the private sector to government work like Musk.

While Griffin said he doesn't agree with every move Musk and the DOGE team have made, "As a taxpayer, I'm so appreciative."

"Is he breaking a lot of glass? Absolutely. But he doesn't have a lot of time," Griffin said.

Still, Griffin — who was critical of President Donald Trump before and during the Republican primaries but ended up voting for him in the 2024 general election — is not a fan of every move the new administration has made.

He told the moderator, UBS' president of the Americas, Rob Karofsky, that the "core promise they need to deliver on" is economic growth in the US to address the growing national debt and the entitlements promised to soon-to-be retirees.

Tariffs are an impediment to that growth, he said, and just the "bombastic rhetoric" has already done damage.

"It sears into the minds of CEOs and policymakers that we can't depend on the United States as a trading partner," he said, pushing companies to explore their options beyond the US.

Tariffs also limit the competition for domestic companies, allowing them to become complacent when countries like China are leading in many industries, especially as it relates to technological advancements around artificial intelligence. He hopes DeepSeek is a "wake-up call" to the US and policymakers.

"Tariffs are what you do in the death throes of a nation," he said, as it "dulls" the competitive edge companies have developed over the years to beat their peers.

It all adds up to uncertainty that has both allies and rivals wondering what the country will do. Even if tariffs eventually get sanded down or are nixed altogether, the volatility has "a permanent and adverse effect," Griffin said.

"That uncertainty, that curtails growth," he said.

• New consultants and podcasts have launched to help people understand how the biggest hedge funds work.
• Brett Caughran, Marc Greenberg, and Doug Garber have spent time either investing or managing PMs.
• Their new ventures aim to demystify the pod hedge fund space, which is constantly in need of talent.

The fundraisers for the biggest hedge funds in the industry — names like Citadel, Millennium, and Point72 — may not want to hear this, but what these managers do is not magic or rocket science.

The work that these funds do, especially the individual portfolio managers and their analysts, is something many could do. Or at least that's the belief of Marc Greenberg, the former director of research at Steve Cohen's Point72.

Greenberg launched a consulting firm called Greener Pastures that works with smaller funds on talent development and their research process and also writes a substack that covers the "block-and-tackle-type stuff" of investing at a multistrategy hedge fund.

It's a "false notion" that "there's this secret sauce that happens within funds," he said, saying the "lore" of the founders can make these firms seem "magical" from the outside.

The reality, he said, is the PMs "work really hard and know their companies really well." His writing is about earnings prep, how to use data, how to manage risk, and how to do fundamental research — and the success of these managers is driven by "the men and the women in the seats."

Greenberg is part of a group of former investors and executives from these multistrategy funds that are trying to make the industry more accessible to those unfamiliar with the inner workings of a Millennium or a Citadel.

Brett Caughran, a former portfolio manager for Schonfeld, Citadel, and D.E. Shaw, founded a training academy, Fundamental Edge, in 2022 with the explicit purpose of training young people in finance for jobs at multistrategy funds. Doug Garber, a former analyst at Citadel and portfolio manager at Millennium, has launched a podcast called "Pitch the PM" where he reviews stock pitches in the same way he would if he were still investing for hedge fund founders Ken Griffin or Izzy Englander.

As the hedge-fund industry has matured and more capital has concentrated among the biggest players, there's a growing demand for talent to keep it all running.

The lack of talent has led to bidding wars that rival free agency in major sports leagues, as Goldman Sachs' prime brokerage desk notes in a recent report that pass-through fees, which cover expenses like bringing on big recruits, were 4% of assets in 2024 — a jump from 3.3% the year prior. In a recent bond offering prospectus, Citadel notes that investors paid $17 billion in pass-through fees from 2021 through mid-2024.

Cohen, the owner of Major League Baseball's New York Mets, has dealt with both, doling out the largest-ever deal in sports history to outfielder Juan Soto and a guarantee of $50 million to lure Marshall Wace PM Kevin Liu to Point72.

But it's not just a shortage of top-tier talent. These funds need more young analysts to support their ever-growing ranks of PMs. What the new breed of consultants, writers, and podcasters are doing is putting the brands of the biggest funds on the radar of smart young people considering their next move — and laying out what life is like at these funds.

"There's definitely a demand for it," Garber said, and he's mentoring young investors in college and leaving grad programs now. This next generation is eager to work for some of the industry's biggest names, he said, but "they don't know the long-short process."

"The students I talk to, they want Citadel or Point72," he said.

750 students and counting

To be sure, it's not uncommon for people to leave hedge funds — which often recruit ambitious, entrepreneurial types — and start their own businesses, even if that startup isn't another investment manager. Former Point72 research head Kirk McKeown cofounded data startup Carbon Arc in 2021. One-time Citadel and Millennium comms leader Tripp Kyle and former AQR spokesperson Claudia Gray partnered to start their external agency, Northport Partners, in 2023. Elliott's former European government affairs leader, Claire Jolly, started consultancy Beaufort Strategy last year.

But those businesses and many of those who have come before them are focused on serving the needs of those already in the industry, not looking to bring a separate universe of people into hedge funds. Greenberg, Caughran, and Garber are all, in a way, speaking to the youngest in the talent pool and increasing the brand recognition of the industry's biggest managers.

It's another example of the institutionalization of the hedge fund industry, which has grown to the point where the biggest managers are recruiting straight from undergraduate programs instead of poaching talent from investment banks or private equity. Point72, Citadel, D.E. Shaw, and others have built competitive, well-paid internship programs. Millennium and UBS have a partnership in which a new grad for the hedge fund would spend a year in the bank's equity research department as an outsourced training year.

Internal training programs though are still a work in progress for many funds and talented young people can get washed out quickly, Caughran said.

"Historically, a lot of funds expected young talent to learn through osmosis," he said, and it was a struggle for him personally when he first got to the buy-side, though he started his investing career at the Tiger Cub hedge fund Maverick Capital, not a multistrategy fund. Fundamental Edge already has had 750 students take its various training courses and has other full-time instructors with buy-side experience reviewing everything from prepping for earnings to understanding factors and risk.

He also lays out what life is like at these firms, which are often more fast-paced than the managers or banks his students are typically working at.

"If you're making the career choice to go to one of these places, you should go in eyes wide open about what the trade-offs and benefits are," he said.

Firms, in general, have also become more transparent, in part to attract more people to their managers and improve their brand recognition. Cohen has spoken about investing and career growth on a company-run podcast. Griffin recently met with Cambridge University students and gave advice on what they should do after graduation.

The advent of Substacks like Greenberg's and podcasts like Garber's only increases awareness of these firms and what they're like from an insider's perspective.

"These are the conversations I am having with my former colleagues from when I worked at Citadel, at Millennium," Garber said.

• The biggest US-based multimanagers like Citadel and Point72 still have their investors in longtime locales.
• London and Hong Kong, regulatory filings show, have hundreds of people, while Dubai and Singapore trail.
• London, in particular, is still a massive hub for US-based managers, data show.

London is far from dead in the hedge fund industry, despite many predictions about its soon-to-come demise.

Following the Labour Party's electoral victory this past summer and the Brexit vote in 2016, there's been chatter that London is losing its standing as a global financial hub. Other cities in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have all been vying to pry off a piece of the city's business.

But regulatory filings for some of the biggest US-based multimanagers, including Citadel, Point72, and Balyasny, show that offices in Mayfair and elsewhere in London were packed with hundreds of investors for these funds, at least as of March of last year. Their numbers in the English capital far outweigh, for now, that of offices in locales trying to lure investors away with lower taxes and warmer weather, including Dubai.

Filings for Citadel, Point72, Balyasny, Schonfeld, Verition, Walleye, and Hudson Bay show that London has more than half its international investing talent. Millennium and ExodusPoint, two other large, US-based multimanagers, do not list their international offices on their regulatory filings and are not included in the graphic.

A person close to Millennium points out the firm has a large international presence, and the $72 billion manager's website notes it operates from more than 140 different places around the world, a majority of which have investment staff. The firm has 18 locations that are deemed "primary offices," and 12 are located outside the US, including London, Paris, Dubai, and Hong Kong.

ExodusPoint declined to comment, but its website states that it has offices in London, Dubai, Jersey, Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong. (The story continues below the graphic.)

Following the UK's official exit from the European Union in 2020, many predicted cities like Paris would become more formidable financial hubs. However, investing talent in European cities, including the French capital, Copenhagen, and Milan, is dwarfed by outposts in the UK. Dubai has not yet made a significant dent in London's head count.

Similarly, in Asia, Singapore was expected to take some of Hong Kong's business, as increased geopolitical tensions between the region and China worried US-based managers, but that has not yet been the reality on the ground.

Of the seven firms that disclosed their international offices, only Verition has more investing talent based in Singapore than Hong Kong. Verition, its December 2024 filing shows, has 13 people who "perform investment advisory functions" in Singapore and no Hong Kong office at all.

Point72, meanwhile, has more than double the number of investors in Hong Kong — 92 — than it does in Singapore, as well as significant footprints in Tokyo, Taipei, and Sydney.

Still, Dubai and Singapore are growing.

In Asia, for example, Bobby Jain's new firm, Jain Global — which wasn't included in this data review because it listed only its New York headquarters in its first regulatory filing in September — chose Singapore as its first Asia hub, tapping former Morgan Stanley executive Sam Kellie-Smith to lead the office.

Hudson Bay, meanwhile, states on its website that it has a Dubai outpost, though it did not list the office in its regulatory filings. The firm did not respond to a request for comment as to why. Walleye's only international office outside Europe is in Dubai.

Recruiters and fund executives say eastward movement from London is driven by two things: talent and capital. Senior PMs who want to sit in the Middle East — for tax purposes or other reasons — can demand it given the tight talent market and high demand for money-making investors, and funds that set up in the region often hope to tap into the massive pools of sovereign wealth capital in the region.

"There is a certain element of Dubai being new and shiny," said James Barfield, buy-side client director for recruiting firm Selby Jennings, "but that doesn't mean a hedge fund is going uproot from New York and London and move their entire operations there."

"I don't see New York or London ever really losing their status," he said.

• A review of regulatory filings of the biggest multimanagers reveals New York's continued supremacy.
• Managers like Citadel and Balyasny have most of their PMs in New York, even if they are headquartered elsewhere.
• Despite interest in places like Miami, investing talent remains in established locales.

This week, the $4.5 trillion hedge fund industry is gathered in Miami for iConnections' annual Global Alts conference. Nearly all of them will leave the Magic City after the conference concludes.

While some big names have fled high-tax cities like New York and Chicago for sunny spots like Miami and West Palm Beach, especially amid the pandemic-era buzz over Wall Street South, the data show that New York is still the place to be for money-managing talent.

Regulatory filings for the industry's largest multimanagers, including Citadel, Millennium, and Point72, show that a vast majority of those who "perform investment advisory functions" work from the Big Apple. Including the three aforementioned managers as well as Balyasny, Schonfeld, ExodusPoint, Verition, Walleye, and Hudson Bay, more than 75% of US-based investing talent works in New York, a Business Insider review of ADVs and internal metrics from certain funds show.

(Story continues after graphic. The ADVs, while updated throughout the year, show a snapshot of the investing head count for each firm from March, so the data reflects firms' staffing from last spring.)

Even managers not based in New York — such as Citadel and Balyasny— have more investing talent in Gotham than their respective headquarters in Florida and Illinois. The same applies to Connecticut-based firms Point72, Vertition, and Hudson Bay. Walleye, which was once based in Minnesota and still has 21 investors in Minneapolis, moved its headquarters to New York at the end of 2023 and now has dozens more traders there than any other office.

"It's an apprenticeship business," Adam Kahn, founder of headhunter firm Odyssey Search Captial Partners, told Business Insider. "For the most part, the opportunity to surround yourself with the best people is going to be in major money centers."

"If you want to sit next to your PM, you need to be where your PM is," he said. And while there are senior leaders who have decamped to sunnier, cheaper spots around the country, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco still have a significant concentration of people.

Greenwich and Stamford, a pair of bedroom communities of the New York metro, have also continued to be important centers of gravity for hedge funds, which have become a part of the social fabric of these Connecticut towns.

Citadel's talent breakdown, according to its ADV showing data from last March, is interesting given the firm's billionaire founder's preference for Miami. Ken Griffin, who is originally from Florida, moved his firm's headquarters south from Chicago in 2022 and has commented that one day, the city could surpass New York as a financial center — though he still referred to Manhattan as the "epicenter of thoughtful people passionately engaged in their careers" in 2023.

While Griffin and some of his executives, including chief risk officer Joanna Welsh and commodities head Sebastian Barrack, have relocated, the firm's investing talent has not yet moved en masse to Florida.

The data showed that more investment-focused staffers were based in the firm's two Texas offices, Houston and Dallas, than in its two Sunshine State offices, Miami and Tampa. The $66 billion fund has more investors in each of its two New York offices as well as its Greenwich, Chicago, and San Francisco offices than it did in its Miami outpost last March. (Story continues below the graphic)

A person close to the manager said the firm is committed to Miami and plans to break ground on its new 54-story waterfront building that will serve as company headquarters sometime later this year or early next year.

"We've welcomed roughly 400 team members to this vibrant city since establishing the firms' global headquarters here in 2022, and we have exciting plans to keep growing our presence in the months and years to come," a statement from the firm reads. The 400 people include employees from both Citadel and Citadel Securities, Griffin's market maker.

Can always catch a flight

Investors on the ground for these managers say different locations provide different benefits. Stockpickers focused on certain industries, like energy or technology, find places like Houston and San Francisco useful to be plugged into the companies they invest in. Quants who do not need to meet with corporate leaders to run their strategies say they're generally more flexible about where they can work than stockpickers who want to hear directly from CEOs.

Meanwhile, young analysts working for portfolio managers based in Connecticut offices often reverse commute from New York to places like Greenwich or Stamford so they can still enjoy the nightlife and culture of the Big Apple.

The ongoing talent war for top-shelf PMs means funds are generally more flexible on location, said Vikram Tandon, the head of Durlston Partners US, a recruiting firm. But that flexibility has a limit.

"The only people who demand to be somewhere and get it are the senior people who are setting up a whole team," Tandon said.

This isn't to say Florida isn't on the rise. Data from hedge-fund seeder Borealis Strategic Capital Partners shows that 11% of US hedge fund launches in 2024 were in Florida, compared to just 3% in 2020. The Tri-State area was at 52%, down from 56% the year prior, according to Borealis.

Two portfolio managers who moved to Miami and West Palm in recent years for two different multimanagers told BI that it's been a net positive for them and their families.

Plus, one of these PMs said, "It's only a two-hour flight back to New York."

• Micah Nance started at Citadel in 2012 as an associate and was named a partner in 2023.
• He and his team are responsible for investing billions across tech and media at Surveyor Capital.
• He walked BI through his daily routine, leadership style, and what he looks for in a new hire.

Micah Nance likes when his direct reports tell him he's wrong.

"We spend a lot of time debating very constructively," the Citadel portfolio manager told Business Insider.

He encourages his analysts to question and correct him and does not shy away from scheduling multiple one-on-one meetings with them a week to hash out investment ideas and exchange feedback.

"It is OK for anyone to say to me, 'Hey, that statement does not make sense. I don't understand. I think it's incorrect," he said. "Here's why I will never be offended by that: No one on the team has been wrong more than me."

Nance is a 13-year vet of Surveyor Capital, one of the stock-picking businesses at $65 billion hedge fund Citadel. He started at Citadel in 2012 as an associate. About eight years later, at age 35, he became a portfolio manager, and by 2023, he was named a partner.

Nance manages a team of nine analysts and associates out of Citadel's Dallas office. Together they cover about 150 tech and media companies and are entrusted with investing "billions of dollars" of firm capital (Citadel declined to give an exact number).

In addition to encouraging debate, Nance said he also seeks to limit the pressure his team might feel to get results to because he believes it leads to better analysis.

"I'm not perfect, and I don't always do everything as well as I'd like, but I want to inject zero excess stress into our decision-making," he explained.

Philip Lee, the head of Surveyor Capital, said Nance's leadership style has helped him stand out at the hedge fund giant, which has consistently ranked among the top-performing funds and saw a 15.1% gain in its flagship Wellington fund last year.

"A good portfolio manager generates extraordinary returns. A great one also develops extraordinary talent," said Lee.

Nance, 40, sat down with Business Insider to talk about his rise at the world's largest hedge fund, what it takes to work at a place like Citadel, and what he looks for when hiring talent. He also walked BI through his daily routine and what it's like to work in Dallas.

Covering tech in Dallas

Nance started his career at Morgan Stanley in equity research in 2007, a path he had to forge largely of his own volition.

As a student at Texas A&M — not exactly an epicenter for Wall Street recruitment — he wasn't a shoo-in for big-time finance jobs. He grew up in nearby Arlington, and before showing up at Morgan Stanely's headquarters in 2006 for internship interviews, had never stepped foot in New York City. But indeed, he got the internship, and then a job offer. Nance spent five years covering tech and media stocks like Disney and CBS for the bank.

Before joining Citadel, Nance didn't expect to return to his home state, he said. But in 2012, a Citadel portfolio manager who was a client of his at the bank was about to launch a new fund at Surveyor in Dallas. Nance soon became the first hire for the team.

"I was at a point where I was looking to move to the buy-side, and I thought that the coverage fit, the individual fit, the opportunity for growth was there, and the path ahead was exciting — and that's before I even factored in the location," he said.

Today, the Dallas office is home to multiple investment teams and a handful of support staff. The office occupies one floor of a building in what's known as the "uptown" neighborhood. Nance and his family — a wife and two young daughters — live nearby.

"People like living here. It's a great place to be a young person, it's a great place to raise a family, and it's a great place to do this job," he said.

Working for a hedge fund with most of its workforce in Miami and New York and covering companies that are largely based on the West Coast comes with challenges. Nance said he does a fair amount of traveling to attend industry conferences, visit Citadel's other offices, and spend time with the management teams of his coverage companies. He also sees upside to being outside the tech or financial epicenters.

"I think one of the things that I've found is I'm not in any sort of echo chamber," he said. "I'm able to do my work and build my conviction and think with duration and not be influenced by a crowd of other like-minded individuals all the time."

What it takes to work at Citadel

Nance starts most days at around 5:30 a.m. and tries to squeeze in some tennis before work to keep himself sharp and in shape.

"We're decision-makers, and I think the better we are mentally and physically, and the happier and more fulfilled we are, the stronger our decision-making capabilities will be."

He typically gets to the office around 7:30 a.m., and from there spends most of his day managing his team and keeping tabs on the stocks they cover. That means knowing what's going on at as many of those companies as he can, including on a macro-economic and geopolitical level.

Managing a portfolio for a hedge fund is a high-stakes job. PMs are responsible for their team's investment decisions and returns to the tune of millions, if not billions, of dollars. A PM's book of business will be determined by his or her success as judged by top brass — often the firm's founder.

"I'm talking to companies, I'm talking to industry participants, we're talking to experts about a specific business line or company," Nance said of his day-to-day job. "I'm trying to digest all of the research products that a large team creates across 150 stocks, and every day I'm trying to do a better job than I did the day before."

He said he normally leaves the office in time for dinner with his family. But the night usually doesn't end without him sneaking in some work from home.

"A lot of nights, I have more work to do," he said. "I'm reading, I'm reviewing, I'm responding to emails or ideas, and trying to ensure that I'm giving timely feedback and asking thoughtful questions. Then I try to get enough rest so I can wake up and do it again the next day and every single day after that."

Career Advice from a PM

Although investing is an analytical job, Nance believes that emotional intelligence is actually a key to success when it comes to picking stocks.

"Ultimately, we're decision-makers, and we're talking about transacting in a public equity market, and the reality is human beings are on the other side making decisions," he said. "What we want to be able to do is understand how other rational human beings will process information over time."

When hiring, Nance looks for candidates who are good debaters, but also composed.

"Pushback can be useful, but when someone is looking for an argument or gets overly emotional in an interview, that's not a positive sign," he said.

He also leans into applicants who have multi-faceted resumes and life experiences.

"I really value people who have done interesting things, who are not just one-trick ponies in terms of 'I'm super smart, and I'm super quantitative,' and that's it," he said. "My experience is that people with more varied experiences often have a higher ceiling over time."

Nance's advice for aspiring traders is to be "somebody who wants to constantly learn, who's willing to grow, and who's flexible but also able to express conviction."

He added: "Nothing replicates or replaces hard work. It's a bit cliche, but it's true. There's no way to build experience except to have experience over a long period of time."

The energy Nance has spent guiding the next generation of traders has already seen some pay off: One of his former analysts recently spun off as a PM with his own book of trades. The two teams work side-by-side in the Dallas office.

Nance says he takes inspiration from Matt Janiga, a Citadel PM who was never Nance's boss or manager but acted as his mentor nonetheless.

"There's no limit to what kindness is going to bring over the course of your career. I've certainly benefited from it and I hope to pass it on every single day to the people I interact with," said Nance.

• Among the multimanagers, $12 billion Schonfeld led the way in 2024.
• The firm bounced back from a tumultuous 2023 to return close to 20% last year.
• Its multistrategy peers ended with double-digit returns but didn't match the S&P 500's 23% gain.

What a difference a year makes.

When 2023 came to a close, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors was trailing its peers and shedding staff. A year later, the $12 billion New York-based manager is atop the league table with a 19.7% gain in 2024, people close to the firm told Business Insider.

Schonfeld was positive every month in 2024 and added 19 portfolio managers across different strategies, one person close to the manager said. The firm was one of many in the industry that expanded their international footprint, with an office in Dubai, and 40% of the firm's risk is now managed by portfolio managers operating outside the US, the person said.

For the most part, the massive multimanager firms that dominated industry news for the past few years performed as expected.

While these managers didn't match the S&P 500's 23% gain last year, nearly all finished 2024 with double-digit net returns.

D.E. Shaw, the $65 billion giant based in New York, returned 18% in its multistrategy Composite fund and more than 36% in its macro-focused Oculus fund, a person familiar confirmed. Bloomberg reported that the firm was planning to return billions of profits to investors.

Ken Griffin's Citadel, which about two years ago was named the most profitable hedge fund of all time, returned 15.1% in 2024 in its flagship Wellington fund, three people familiar with the firm's performance told BI. One person close to the firm said the Miami-based firm returned more than 22% in its Tactical Trading fund, which comprises the firm's fundamental equities and quant teams.

Izzy Englander's Millennium, meanwhile, finished the year up 15% after a 2.5% gain in December.

One of the year's most interesting managers, Walleye Capital, capped its big 2024 with a 1.8% gain in December, bringing the firm's 2024 returns to 17.7%, a person close to the firm said.

For more returns, see the table below. Managers declined to comment or did not immediately return requests for comment. Firms will be added as their performances are learned.

• Institutionalization was one of the biggest themes in hedge funds this year.
• A once-scrappy industry is starting to resemble private equity and venture capital.
• The biggest firms and new launches have evolved significantly from the days of a couple of guys and a Bloomberg.

The game has changed.

Hedge funds, led by the industry's biggest names who set the agenda for the multi-trillion-dollar sector, were once known for their scrappiness, speed, and reliance on the brains and vision of their founders.

Now, as the industry's investor base has shifted to long-term institutions from wealthy families and small funds-of-funds, hedge funds have become institutions of their own. 2024 may be the turning point for the space that, in 10 years' time, industry observers will look back on as the beginning of the next era.

The biggest managers in the space are preparing for life beyond their founders, long-standing funds are becoming more formulaic and bureaucratic, and new entrants need to raise more money than ever before.

Multistrategy managers like Millennium, Citadel, and Point72 have long been moving in this direction, but recent moves by each of the firms' founders point to a world in which these giants outlast their larger-than-life leaders.

Ken Griffin, Citadel's billionaire founder, said in November that he would be open to selling a stake in his $66 billion Miami-based asset manager. Millennium and the world's largest asset manager BlackRock have reportedly had talks about the latter taking a stake in the former.

Both firms are set to outlast their founders, with built-out infrastructure and leadership teams littered with former Goldman Sachs partners. $72 billion Millennium, for example, created the office of the CIO in late 2022 and promoted longtime executive Ajay Nagpal to president, providing investors with a clear line into the next level of leadership beyond founder Izzy Englander.

The legendary founder of $35 billion Point72, meanwhile, has stepped away from trading his own book of stocks, which is how he burst onto the scene decades ago.

While Steve Cohen spends plenty of time and money on the baseball team he owns, the New York Mets, a person close to the firm said the decision to step back from running a book was not an indication that he's spending any less time working at his manager.

In a recent internal town hall, this person said, he described no longer having a book under his purview as "freeing" as he can spend more time on strategic initiatives for the firm. Without a portfolio to manage, the market's hours no longer dictate Cohen's schedule — a flexibility he appreciates as he balances running the manager and his baseball team.

For example, in mid-October, Cohen was set to appear on a panel at investment consultant Albourne Partners' annual conference in New York, but canceled because the Mets had gone on a run in the playoffs, people familiar with the event told Business Insider.

Succession, quality launches, and a promising environment

Beyond the main multistrategy names, a number of long-running firms across the industry are, structurally, starting to look more like peers in private equity than smaller rivals in the hedge fund space.

Places like Elliott Management centralized decision-making and created more internal structure, which has frustrated some veterans of Paul Singer's asset manager but provides the needed hierarchy.

Meanwhile, firms like Two Sigma and Bridgewater have officially moved on from their founders with new leadership. Brevan Howard's billionaire founder Alan Howard no longer trades for his firm.

At the other end of the industry, the bar for new launches has increased substantially, and the next generation of industry leaders are starting the firms with a much more institutional feel than even five years ago. Bobby Jain's $5.3 billion launch in July, for example, had plenty of big-name hires and titles right from the start.

In 2023, the average fund launched with $300 million, according to Goldman Sachs' prime brokerage division. PivotalPath, the industry data tracker run by Jon Caplis, said in an end-of-year report that it expects 2024 to be similar, driven by the increase of multi-managers allocating externally.

It's been driven by a focus from allocators on "quality" launches, PivotalPath's report states; the firm is tracking 145 new funds launching between the start of 2024 and the second quarter of 2025 with founders who come from funds with more than $1 billion.

If you're able to command enough capital — either from a platform like Millennium or big allocators like pensions, sovereign wealth funds, and endowments — it should be worth it. Longtime industry players and investors believe it is shaping up to be a strong period for the industry thanks to increased volatility that will allow actively managed investment firms to shine.

"Our underlying hedge fund managers are active, fundamental stock pickers who seek to identify the best opportunities and offer differentiated exposure," wrote New York-based fund-of-funds Old Farm Partners in a recent note that focused on why active management should shine in the coming years.

"Given the argument that we have laid out in this paper, we think the current market backdrop should provide a favorable setup for our strategy going forward."

• Citadel CEO Ken Griffin's Stegosaurus fossil will be displayed at the American Museum of Natural History.
• Griffin purchased the fossil — dubbed Apex — for $44.6 million in July.
• The fossil is 150 million years old and nearly 80% complete.

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin's Stegosaurus fossil has found a temporary home at the American Museum of Natural History.

The 150-million-year-old fossil known as "Apex" will be displayed at the Manhattan-based museum starting December 8. It will arrive at the American Museum of Natural History as part of a special loan from Griffin, who purchased it during a Sotheby's auction for $44.6 million in July.

Commercial paleontologist Jason Cooper discovered Apex in May 2022 at Morrison Formation near Dinosaur, Colorado. It is 11.5 feet tall, 27 feet long, and nearly 80% complete. Apex is thought to be the largest and one of the most complete Stegosaurus specimens discovered so far.

Sotheby's, which initially expected the fossil to go for about $6 million, said in a statement that Apex set off a "bidding battle" and was "the most valuable fossil ever sold at auction."

At the time, some paleontologists argued it shouldn't have been privately sold but rather used for educational purposes.

"We are thrilled to have Apex on view at the Museum and grateful to Ken Griffin for his commitment to sharing this magnificent specimen with the public and for partnering with our Museum to do so," Sean M. Decatur, President of the American Museum of Natural History, said in a press release.

The press release said Griffin's decision to loan the fossil will allow scientists in the museum's Division of Paleontology to study it as part of a new research initiative.

A representative for Griffin said he also provided sampling needed for scientific research and funding for educational programming. A postdoctoral fellow will also have the opportunity to research Apex alongside other Stegosaurus specimens.

"Apex offers a unique window into our planet's distant past, and I'm so pleased to partner with the American Museum of Natural History to showcase it at one of our country's preeminent scientific institutions," Griffin said in a statement to Business Insider. "I am grateful that millions of visitors and researchers will now be able to see and learn from this magnificent specimen of the Late Jurassic Period."

He added: "The joy and awe every child feels coloring a Stegosaurus with their crayons will now be brought to life for the millions of people who have the opportunity to see this epic dinosaur in person."