Per Forbes

Citadel did extremely well in 2022 as Ken Griffin's hedge fund bagged $16 billion, making it the top-earning hedge fund of the year. This made up for almost a quarter of the fund's net gains since it started doing business in 1990.

Due to the massive gains, Griffin's net worth has reached a whopping $32 billion in just two years. Citadel's CEO is now dubbed the new hedge fund king of LHC's annual ranking with the new achievement.

This comes at a time when global hedge funds' performance was expected to reach a record 14-year-low. In the first three quarters of 2022, global hedge funds' net assets fell by 4.8%, resulting in a $109.8 billion outflow.

One of Citadel's main competitors, Bridgewater, was only able to report net gains of $6.2 billion in 2022. In 2021, the flagship fund of Citadel was able to report a 26% return while jumping to 38.1% with its Wellington fund in 2022.

Citadel reported $62.3 billion in assets under management for 2022. In total, $22.4 billion was generated in profits after fees throughout the top 20 hedge funds, according to LCH Investments estimates, per Bloomberg.

Ken Griffin's Citadel outperformed John Paulson's gain in 2007, which reported a recorded $15 billion. Paulson made the historic bet of going directly against the subprime mortgage, which sparked the financial crisis of 2008.

To give a scale of how much investors in Citadel earned if they rode with the hedge fund from the start, a $1 million investment in 1990 upon the inception of the Wellington would be worth a whopping $328 million today compared to an investment in the S&P 500 Index, which would only yield $23 million.

The performance of Citadel comes at a time when investors are starting to hold new cash records as uncertainty sparks in the market. This is as money market accounts held a record $4.814 trillion as of Jan 4.

See flow at unusualwhales.com/flow.

Other News:

Resources:

Forbes

Bloomberg