Hedge Funder's Leveraged Interest Rate Bet Makes Him 6th Highest-Paid Manager

Haidar Capital Management founder Said Haidar made a massive inflation bet that netted him $859 million. This award propelled him to Bloomberg's Top 10 Earners list.

Haidar predicted that markets would ignore inflation risks. As a result, central bank tightening was likely. He was right. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates to fight inflation. Haidar's intuition about exploding inflation around the world led him to make big bets on a rapid rise in interest rates. Once rates started to rise, Haidar's hedge fund returned 193% to investors.

According to Bloomberg, Haidar became the sixth highest-paid hedge fund manager with $859 million split between a $645 million gain on personal investing and a $314 million share of performance fees of the fund. Bloomberg based its analysis on publicly available figures for hedge fund managers and on management and performance fee estimates where data was not available.

Successful hedge fund managers reflect a resurgence of the old guard in the world of finance. Others, who made big bets on tech stocks and private startups, posted some of their worst annual returns.

The top 15 earners raised $13.8 billion in total, marking the lowest annual total since 2019. And despite its previous success, Haidar's 2023 year got off to a rocky start after its fund fell 13% in January. Nevertheless, he is confident that inflation will remain high, forcing central banks to continue raising interest rates.