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| 13. (tie) Chris Rokos / $250 million | ||
| Title: Founder, chairman and chief executive officer Firm: Rokos Capital Management (London)Age: 462016 Rank: No. 13 (tie)2016 Earnings: $250 million2015 Rank: Did not qualifyYears on list: 3 | Source of BA in mathematics, University of Oxford, 1989 | |
Chris Rokos has gotten off to a strong start since launching his firm, Rokos Capital Management, in September 2015 with an impressive $3.5 billion. In 2016, his first full year of trading, he posted a 20 percent gain, qualifying for the Rich List for the first time in six years. This is especially impressive given that last year most macro funds posted mediocre gains, with many in the red until the U.S. elections in November. Rokos, however, made money every month. No single strategy drove returns, although nearly half the firm’s gains were generated in the final quarter thanks to the U.S. elections.
One investor says Rokos did a good job of trading around the Brexit vote, betting on an increase in short-term volatility and then adjusting when the volatility subsided. At the beginning of the second half of the year, risk in the portfolio was heavily concentrated toward interest rates, especially in Japan, where Rokos was betting on additional monetary easing.
This is Rokos’s third time on the Rich List. He helped found Brevan Howard in 2002 with Alan Howard and three others he’d worked with at Credit Suisse Group, where he was a fixed-income derivatives trader. At Brevan Howard he specialized in trading interest rates. Rokos left Brevan Howard in 2012 and subsequently sued the firm over a noncompete agreement. He settled the lawsuit in early 2015, and Brevan Howard took a stake in Rokos Capital Management.
Rokos is a big supporter of the U.K.'s Conservative Party. Earlier this year reports surfaced that Rokos was looking to raise an additional $2 billion for his London-based firm. That would boost total assets to more than $6 billion.
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