If baseball were measured in billions, Steve Cohen would have just won the World Series.

The billionaire owner of the New York Mets pocketed $3.4 billion from his hedge fund, Point72 Asset Management, in 2025 — more than $9 million a day — topping Bloomberg’s annual ranking of the world’s highest-paid hedge fund managers.

That’s more than enough to soothe the sting of another disappointing Mets season at Citi Field, where Cohen publicly apologized to fans after a $340 million payroll failed to deliver October glory.

On Wall Street, however, “King Cohen” delivered a championship performance.

His former hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, pleaded guilty in 2013 to insider trading and paid a record $1.8 billion penalty to the U.S. Department of Justice and another $616 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

‘Billions’

Cohen himself was never criminally charged and denied wrongdoing, but SAC was effectively shut down to outside investors. Client money was returned. The firm’s name became synonymous with Wall Street excess and regulatory firepower.

For many managers, that would have been the end.

For “The Hedge Fund King,” however, it was only intermission.

When Point72 reopened to outside investors in 2018, more than $4 billion poured in almost immediately. Today, the Stamford, Conn.-based powerhouse oversees $45.7 billion, rivaling titans like Citadel and Millennium Management.

It’s a comeback story that feels almost scripted — fitting for a man widely seen as the inspiration for the fictional billionaire Bobby Axelrod on the Showtime series “Billions.”

For the first time since Bloomberg began compiling its rankings, Cohen edged out Chicago rival Ken Griffin of Citadel. Griffin earned $2.4 billion in 2025, landing in fifth place.

Close behind Cohen were: David Tepper of Appaloosa Management — $3.2 billion; and Israel Englander of Millennium — $3.1 billion

The top 20 managers collectively made $28.3 billion last year. The average take? A cool $1.4 billion each — the highest in five years.

Volatile markets helped. Nearly every major hedge fund made money in 2025, delivering the industry’s strongest performance since 2009.

Still, Point72 stood out.

The multi-strategy firm returned 17.5%, outperforming Citadel’s roughly 10% gain — its weakest showing since 2018.

Bigger, Broader, More Aggressive

Point72 isn’t shrinking from success. It’s scaling it:

• 12 new offices in under a decade
• 3,000 employees globally
• More than 190 trading pods
• A rapidly expanding quant arm, Cubist
• New pushes into macro, private credit, venture capital — and possibly commodities

In 2024, Cohen even allowed a star trader, Eric Sanchez, to run an internal fund — Turion — which now manages $3 billion and gained 30% last year.

And when investors lined up with $9 billion in fresh capital in early 2025? Point72 turned them away.

On Wall Street, scarcity can be as powerful as performance.

The Mets and the Myth

Cohen bought the Mets for a record $2.4 billion in 2020, promising a World Series within five years. That window has closed without a title.

But if baseball glory has eluded him, financial dominance hasn’t.

Like Bobby Axelrod — minus the scripted indictments — Cohen has mastered the art of reinvention: aggressive risk-taking, relentless expansion, and an unapologetic embrace of scale.

Bloomberg Methodology

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, company websites and news reporting to determine AUM at the start of 2025. Fee data comes from regulatory filings and reporting. Bloomberg assumes 2%/20% where undisclosed. Analysis includes major hedge/long-only funds only. Ownership and investments rely on SEC filings and Bloomberg Billionaires Index data.