Hedge Funder's Leveraged Bet on Interest Rates Makes Him 6th Highest-paid Manager Said Haidar earned $859 million from an inflation bet that landed him in the upper echelon of highest-paid managers.

Haidar Capital Management founder Said Haidar made a massive bet on inflation that earned him $859 million. That payoff propelled him onto Bloomberg's top 10 earners list.

Haidar predicted that markets wouldn't consider inflation risks. As a result, central bank tightening was likely. He was right. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates to battle inflation. Haidar's intuition about inflation exploding worldwide led him to make big bets that interest rates would climb rapidly. Once rates began to rise, Haidar's hedge fund saw a 193% return for investors.

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

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

The top 15 highest earners collected $13.8 billion overall, marking the lowest annual total since 2019. And despite his previous success, Haidar's 2023 saw a rocky start after his fund sank 13% in January. Still, he's confident inflation will remain elevated, forcing central banks to keep raising interest rates.