Best Performing Hedge Funds in 2026: Reported Returns, Ranked
Which hedge funds beat the S&P 500 in 2025 and who leads 2026 so far: Bridgewater, Citadel, Millennium, Pershing Square and 20 more, every number cited to its source.
The best performing large hedge funds of 2025, by reported net return, were D1 Capital Partners at 33.7% and Bridgewater's Pure Alpha at 33%, followed by Whale Rock at 27%, Element Capital at 24% and Lone Pine at 23%; ten of the 22 large funds with a public 2025 figure matched or beat the S&P 500's 17.44% total return. For 2026 so far, the strongest reported figures belong to Whale Rock (35.1% through July), Citadel Tactical Trading (near 27% through July) and Bridgewater Pure Alpha (18.4% through September 29), while Pershing Square Holdings is down 9.6% through September 30. Every figure here is net of fees, as stated by the fund or by a publication citing its investor letters, and current as of October 3, 2026.
Hedge funds do not publish audited returns. What exists in public is a trail of investor-letter figures quoted by Bloomberg, Reuters, Institutional Investor, Hedgeweek and Fortune, plus the monthly reports of a few listed vehicles. This post collects that trail for 26 of the most-watched funds and names the source of every number.
Which hedge funds performed best in 2025?
Calendar 2025 is the last full year every fund has had a chance to report, so it is the one clean ranking. "vs S&P 500" is the fund's reported net return minus the index's 17.44% total return with dividends reinvested for the same year. Rows marked "(firm)" are firm-wide returns as the press reports them, not a single fund or share class.
| # | Fund | 2025 net return | vs S&P 500 (17.44%) | Reported by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | D1 Capital Partners | 33.7% | +16.3 pts | Hedgeweek |
| 2 | Bridgewater Pure Alpha | 33.0% | +15.6 pts | Reuters (year through Dec 29) |
| 3 | Whale Rock Capital (Flagship) | 27.0% | +9.6 pts | Hedge Vision |
| 4 | Element Capital | 24.0% | +6.6 pts | Institutional Investor |
| 5 | Lone Pine Capital | 23.0% | +5.6 pts | Hedgeweek |
| 6 | Pershing Square Holdings | 20.9% | +3.5 pts | Pershing Square Holdings (NAV, own report) |
| 7 | Citadel Tactical Trading | 18.6% | +1.2 pts | CNBC via Yahoo Finance |
| 8 | DE Shaw Composite | 18.5% (estimated) | +1.1 pts | Hedgeweek |
| 9 | ExodusPoint (firm) | 18.0% | +0.6 pts | Fortune |
| 10 | Point72 (firm) | 17.5% | +0.1 pts | Yahoo Finance |
| 11 | Balyasny Asset Management (firm) | 16.7% | -0.7 pts | Hedgeweek |
| 12 | Coatue Management | 13.9% | -3.5 pts | Institutional Investor |
| 13 | Millennium Management (firm) | 10.5% | -6.9 pts | Fortune |
| 14 | Citadel Wellington | 10.2% | -7.2 pts | Bloomberg |
| 15 | Renaissance RIEF | 9.64% | -7.8 pts | Insider Monkey |
| 16 | Greenlight Capital | 9.0% | -8.4 pts | Greenlight Q4 2025 letter via HedgeFundAlpha |
| 17 | Third Point Offshore | 8.9% | -8.5 pts | Malibu Life Holdings monthly release |
| 18 | Viking Global | 8.6% | -8.8 pts | Hedgeweek |
| 19 | Tiger Global | 7.9% | -9.5 pts | Institutional Investor |
| 20 | Elliott Management | about 7% | -10.4 pts | Institutional Investor |
| 21 | Tudor BVI Global | 4.6% | -12.8 pts | Institutional Investor |
| 22 | Brevan Howard Master | 0.75% (estimated) | -16.7 pts | Hedgeweek |
Four funds in the tracker have no full-year 2025 figure in public: AQR Absolute Return, Baupost Group, Marshall Wace Eureka and Two Sigma Compass. Marshall Wace comes closest, with a Bloomberg-compiled 11.6% for Eureka as of December 30, 2025, reported by Fortune; it is two days short of a full year, so it stays out of the ranking. AQR, Baupost and Two Sigma rarely let a share-class return reach print, and a blank cell means we found no citable number, not that the return was zero.
Which hedge funds are performing best in 2026 so far?
The 2026 figures below end on different dates, from March 31 to September 30, because each one is the latest a fund has let out. A figure through July is not comparable with one through September, and none of them lines up with a single S&P 500 number, so this table ranks what has been reported rather than who is winning the year. Read the "Through" column before the return.
| Fund | 2026 YTD net return | Through | Reported by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whale Rock Capital (Flagship) | 35.1% | Jul 31 | Bloomberg via BeInCrypto |
| Citadel Tactical Trading | near 27% | Jul 31 | Yahoo Finance |
| Bridgewater Pure Alpha | 18.4% | Sep 29 | Hedgeweek |
| Coatue Management | 14.3% | Jul 31 | Hedgeweek |
| DE Shaw Composite | 13.9% | Jun 30 | Hedgeweek |
| Citadel Wellington | 12.1% | Aug 31 | Hedgeweek |
| Point72 (firm) | 10.9% | Jul 31 | Business Insider via Yahoo Finance |
| Millennium Management (firm) | 8.2% | Aug 31 | Hedgeweek |
| Third Point Offshore | 6.9% | Jun 30 | Malibu Life Holdings H1 results |
| ExodusPoint (firm) | 4.9% | Aug 31 | Hedgeweek |
| D1 Capital Partners | 2.7% | Mar 31 | Hedgeweek |
| Viking Global | 2.6% | Jun 30 | Hedgeweek |
| Greenlight Capital | 1.9% | Jun 30 | Greenlight Q2 2026 letter via HedgeFundAlpha |
| Brevan Howard Master | 1.78% (estimated) | Aug 28 | BH Macro monthly shareholder report |
| Balyasny Asset Management (firm) | 0.5% | Aug 31 | Hedgeweek |
| Pershing Square Holdings | -9.6% | Sep 30 | Pershing Square Holdings (NAV, own report) |
Ten funds have no citable 2026 figure yet: AQR Absolute Return, Baupost, Element Capital, Elliott Management, Lone Pine, Marshall Wace Eureka, Renaissance RIEF, Tiger Global, Tudor BVI Global and Two Sigma Compass. The rule is the same as for 2025: no number without a source we can cite.
Who moved the most this year?
Whale Rock had the largest swing on the list in both directions. Hedgeweek, citing Bloomberg, put the Flagship fund at 72.5% for the first half of 2026 on AI and semiconductor positions; Bloomberg then reported the fund fell 21.7% in July, which leaves it at 35.1% for the year through July 31. Coatue followed a similar path at smaller scale: 24.5% through June per Hedgeweek, then an 8.3% July decline that trimmed the year to 14.3%.
Bridgewater Pure Alpha is the only fund with a figure near the end of the third quarter. Per Hedgeweek, the "flagship Pure Alpha macro fund gained 18.4% during the first nine months of 2026", after 8.1% through June per Reuters. It follows a 33% gain in 2025.
Pershing Square Holdings publishes its own monthly NAV, so its path is the best documented: -12.6% at June 30, -11.6% at July 28, -5.2% at August 31 and -9.6% at September 30, all from the fund's own reports. The 2025 figure, 20.9%, is also the fund's own.
Citadel reads as two rows. Tactical Trading rose 14.3% through June per Hedgeweek and, per figures shared with investors and reported by Yahoo Finance, sat near 27% for the year after July; the 27% is an approximation in the source. Wellington, the flagship, was at 5.7% through June per Bloomberg; the 12.1% through August comes from a Hedgeweek piece that gives Citadel's firm return without naming the fund, and we carry it because it compounds exactly from the fund-named June figure plus the reported July and August months.
The multi-strategy firms sit in the middle. Millennium was 10.5% through June and 8.2% through August per Hedgeweek; Point72 was 14.5% through June and 10.9% through July; ExodusPoint stands at 4.9% through August and Balyasny at 0.5%, after a -3.8% first quarter. All four are firm-wide numbers, which is how the press reports them.
D1 Capital, the top 2025 name, has only a March figure in public: up around 2.7% per Hedgeweek. Later aggregator pieces describe a much stronger summer, but none we could read names a figure we can quote, so the cell waits.
Where do these numbers come from?
Hedge funds report to their investors, not to the public, and no regulator requires them to publish returns. The figures above come from three kinds of source. First, a fund's own publication, where it exists: Pershing Square Holdings and Third Point's listed feeder publish monthly, BH Macro publishes a monthly estimate for Brevan Howard's Master fund, and Greenlight's quarterly letters circulate widely. Second, the primary financial press, Bloomberg, Reuters, CNBC and the Financial Times, quoting investor letters or people familiar with the figures. Third, the trade press, Hedgeweek, Institutional Investor and Fortune, often relaying the first two. Most cells in this post are the third kind.
Every figure is net of fees as the source states it. A few carry the source's own hedge: DE Shaw's 2025 return and Brevan Howard's figures are described as estimates, Citadel Tactical Trading's 27% as approximate, Elliott's 2025 as "about 7 percent". Brevan Howard's figures are the NAV return of BH Macro, a listed feeder, which tracks the Master fund closely but is not the investor-level return. The multi-strategy firms report one firm-wide number, so Millennium, Balyasny, Point72 and ExodusPoint appear as firms rather than funds.
Strong years get reported more readily than weak ones, and a headline number can describe a flagship share class rather than every vehicle. Both are reasons to keep the citation attached to the number, which is what the tracker does: each cell links to the article or report it came from, with a short quote, so the figure can be checked against its origin.
How to keep following it
The Hedge fund reported returns tracker holds all 26 funds with their annual history, the latest year-to-date figure, a source link and quote on every cell, and the fund's return relative to the S&P 500 for the same calendar year. A second column, computed from the firm's quarterly 13F filings, shows how its disclosed long US equity book did against the index over the trailing year, which is a useful cross-check on a long-biased fund and a deliberately different number for a macro or market-neutral one; the methodology page explains how to read both.
The same table is available through the Trackers API as hedge-fund-reported-returns, one call returning every row with its citation, so an agent or a spreadsheet can pull it alongside the firm's 13F holdings and the rest of a company's record. A free key returns a preview of the leading rows and the paid plan opens the full table. The data refreshes monthly, with new annual figures arriving as funds report them, which clusters in the first quarter of each year, and cells updated in place when a better primary source appears.
If you follow the other public trails of money, the same approach applies to insider trading trackers and congressional trading trackers.
FAQ
Which hedge fund performed best in 2025? Among large funds with a public 2025 figure, D1 Capital Partners reported 33.7% net and Bridgewater's Pure Alpha reported 33%, followed by Whale Rock at 27%, Element Capital at 24% and Lone Pine at 23%. The S&P 500 returned 17.44% with dividends in 2025. Hedge funds do not publish audited returns, so these are figures reported by the funds or by the press citing investor letters.
What is the average hedge fund return in 2025? There is no audited average. Across the 22 large funds in our tracker with a public 2025 figure, the median was about 15% net of fees, and ten of the 22 matched or beat the S&P 500's 17.44% total return. Industry-wide averages published by index providers cover thousands of smaller funds and are not comparable to this list.
How did Citadel do in 2025 and 2026? Citadel's flagship Wellington fund returned 10.2% in 2025 per Bloomberg, and trade press puts it at 12.1% for 2026 through August. Citadel Tactical Trading returned 18.6% in 2025 per CNBC and was reported near 27% for 2026 through July. Both are net of fees as reported; Citadel does not publish returns itself.
How did Bridgewater do this year? Bridgewater's Pure Alpha fund gained 18.4% in the first nine months of 2026 through September 29, per Hedgeweek, after a 33% gain in 2025 per Reuters. Those are reported figures for the flagship fund, not an audited series.
Is Pershing Square down in 2026? Yes. Pershing Square Holdings, the listed vehicle, reported a net return of -9.6% for 2026 through September 30 in its own monthly NAV report, after a 20.9% NAV return in 2025. It is one of the few funds on this list that publishes its own performance.
Where can I see hedge fund returns and who publishes them? Hedge funds report to their investors, not the public, so returns reach the public through investor letters quoted by Bloomberg, Reuters, the Financial Times, Institutional Investor and Hedgeweek, plus the handful of listed vehicles that publish NAV, such as Pershing Square Holdings and BH Macro. The SentiSense Hedge fund reported returns tracker collects those figures with a citation and quote on every cell and refreshes monthly.
Do hedge fund returns beat the S&P 500? In 2025, ten of the 22 large funds with a public figure matched or beat the S&P 500's 17.44% total return and twelve lagged it, from D1 Capital at 33.7% down to Brevan Howard's Master fund at an estimated 0.75%. Comparing a hedge fund to the index only makes sense for full calendar years; mid-year figures end on different dates and cannot be lined up against one benchmark number.
See the full tracker, every cell cited →
SentiSense provides market information, sentiment analysis, institutional flow data, and data intelligence for informational and educational purposes only. We do not provide investment advice, recommendations, or financial guidance. Reported hedge fund returns are figures stated by the funds or by publications citing them, not an audited or independently verified performance series. Users are solely responsible for their own investment decisions.