Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, speaks to the Financial Membership of New York at The Plaza Lodge in New York, Nov. 21, 2024.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
Billionaire investor Ken Griffin’s flagship hedge fund at Citadel climbed double digits in 2025, navigating a risky yr marked by sharp market swings, commerce tensions and a late-year rebound in threat property.
Citadel’s flagship multistrategy Wellington fund, its largest, gained 10.2% in 2025, in accordance with an individual conversant in the agency’s returns who requested to stay nameless as the knowledge is personal.
The agency’s tactical buying and selling fund, which blends equities with quantitative methods, rose 18.6% in 2025, the particular person mentioned. Citadel’s basic fairness technique returned 14.5%, whereas its international fastened earnings fund superior 9.4%.
Citadel declined to remark.
The S&P 500 locked in a 16.4% achieve for the yr, its third straight double-digit annual advance. That marks a powerful restoration from the rout seen in early April following President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs announcement. At one level, the S&P 500 was even on the cusp of closing in bear market territory.
The hedge fund plans to return about $5 billion of earnings earned this yr to shoppers in an effort to restrict capital development, CNBC’s Leslie Picker beforehand reported. The transfer is predicted to cut back property beneath administration to about $67 billion from roughly $72 billion.
Wellington’s long-term monitor report stays robust because the fund has generated an annualized return of 19% since its inception in 1990, the particular person mentioned.
