Ken Griffin advised investors navigating last month's markets to "tread water and not drown."
The legions of portfolio managers who work for his $65 billion firm and its rivals managed to do better than that.
Griffin's flagship fund at Citadel, Wellington, was up 1.3% last month, bringing its 2025 returns to 0.5%, a person close to the Miami-based firm said. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported the fund's returns.
Big-name funds like Millennium, Point72, Balyasny, and ExodusPoint also logged solid gains in April, people close to the managers said. ExodusPoint, the New York-based manager run by Michael Gelband, is atop the leaderboard among the large multistrategy funds for the month with a 2.8% return.
Citadel's other funds, which focus on specific asset classes, were also up last month, the person said, led by the manager's equities strategy, which made 2.2% in April. That strategy is now up 0.5% for the year.
Meanwhile, the firm's global fixed income fund has generated returns of 4.6% through April after a 1.2% gain last month, the person said. The firm's tactical trading fund, which combines the firm's fundamental equity and quant strategies, is up 3.2% in 2025 after a 1.9% gain in April.
The strong performance was a reversal from March and February, when Citadel and Millennium uncharacteristically lost money in back-to-back months.
Still, last month was another rocky one in markets, as Griffin's comments at a Semafor conference in Washington, DC, made clear. President Donald Trump's tariff policies, revealed early in April on "Liberation Day," upended global trade.
His administration has paused some of the tariffs, and stocks rebounded, though the S&P 500 still finished the month down 0.8%. For the year, the index is down more than 5%, shedding trillions in value.
Multistrategy funds, known for their ability to generate returns in all market environments, have largely handled the volatility well, though some of the biggest names in the sector have trailed smaller rivals so far this year.
The firms mentioned declined to comment. The table below will be updated as more performance figures are learned.
| Fund | April performance | 2025 performance |
| AQR Apex | -0.7% | 8.1% |
| ExodusPoint | 2.8% | 6.4% |
| Walleye | 1.9% | 4.9% |
| Dymon Asia | 1.8% | 4.5% |
| Balyasny | 0.9% | 3.4% |
| LMR | 1% | 3.4% |
| Schonfeld Partners | 1.1% | 3.2% |
| Point72 | 2.3% | 3% |
| Citadel Wellington | 1.3% | 0.5% |
| Millennium | 0.5% | -1.4% |
| Eisler | -2.9% | -2% |
