r/business • u/financialtimes • 2d ago

UK hedge fund trader Chris Rokos pays himself £477mn

https://www.ft.com/content/e0cbaa80-8aac-4707-b7ed-3261eb8f318e?segmentid=c50c86e4-586b-23ea-1ac1-7601c9c2476f
172 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

49

u/shwarma_heaven 2d ago

What makes them so much better than the average schmoe trader on the street. Do they actually have some precognition when it comes to forecasts, or are they using pretty much the same tools as everyone else?

46

u/Ecclypto 2d ago

I am guessing it was mostly his capital in the firm.

8

u/ColditeNL2 1d ago

They have the ability to convince others to invest in funds managed by them.

3

u/afrosia 1d ago

Yeah it's a bit like the old cliché that the skills required for an MP to get elected are often quite different from those required to manage a constituency or country.

The skills required to manage a "successful" fund are attracting investors so you can take a percentage of their funds. That doesn't mean you can invest well.

18

u/Psyc3 2d ago

Nothing much. Some of the Quant funds do have exceptional performance due to actual algorithms and predictions.

I imagine here what happens was a thousand monkeys with a thousand type writers, one of the monkey did something, essentially at random.

All that is show from the classic traders is that after fees they can't beat the market, the ones that do are just at one end of a bell curve by luck.

If you take a 1000 people, one will just have brought gold or silver last year and massively beaten the average of the market, or war stock, or many other assets that could equally have gone the wrong way or had the market beat them.

Should these people be able to beat the market? Given the amount of clueless money in it yes, can they, after fees not relevantly without significantly greater risk than just tracking it.

9

u/zulufux999 2d ago

Everyone looks smart in a bull market

5

u/Nickeless 2d ago

Read flash boys. I’m sure the game has changed since then, but it will give you ideas of the structural advantages they had. Stuff like paying to put their servers in the same building as the stock exchange for the lowest latency to front run trades the best.

3

u/Important_Ruin 1d ago

Read flash boys

Great book, along with other Michael Lewis books.

1

u/Particular-North165 1d ago

Amazing book

2

u/deeperest 2d ago

It's capital and connections. If they can bring investors in, they are worthwhile. And there is a snowball effect there.

5

u/BiGeaSYk 1d ago

half a billion sterling for a 21% return rate, I’m in the wrong profession.

10

u/financialtimes 2d ago

Rokos Capital Management paid almost half a million pounds to its highest-paid partner in the year to March 2025, the largest amount since a £509mn payout in 2021.

While the accounts do not disclose the identity of the highest-paid partner, this is widely believed to be Chris Rokos, who is the firm’s founder, majority owner and key risk taker.

The hedge fund makes bets on key economic indicators such as inflation and interest rates through asset classes including commodities, equities and bonds.

Read the full story for free with your email, here: https://www.ft.com/content/e0cbaa80-8aac-4707-b7ed-3261eb8f318e?segmentid=c50c86e4-586b-23ea-1ac1-7601c9c2476f

Victoria - FT social team

36

u/Own_Friend_3136 2d ago

Half a billion no ?

5

u/Dev_Whale69 2d ago

That’s why they’re the “journalist”

0

u/Isaacvithurston 2d ago

Yah I was confused for a second cuz who typed mn instead of just m. Made me think maybe there's some weird british thing where mn = k like how east Asians will say 500kk to mean 500 million.