A Singapore hedge fund that wants its 22-year-olds to be rich & happy is beating the rest

One of the best performing hedge funds of 2026 so far is in Singapore. It is not comprised of seasoned portfolio managers who have done their time in banks or rival funds. It does not churn through staff and ruthlessly eject poor performers. It likes to be kind. And it likes to hire people in their early 20s. 

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The fund is Quantedge, a systematic hedge fund based in Singapore which has been running for 20 years and has $6bn in assets under management. Figures released today from Bloomberg say that its year-to-date returns are 34.6%. This compares to 8.2% at Millennium, 10.9% at Point72 and 12% at Citadel - after Citadel helpfully bought Leopold Aschenbrenner's publicly traded portfolio at a 10% discount. 

Speaking on the Odds on Open podcast last week, Quantedge CEO Suhaimi Zainul-Abidin said the fund doesn't really hire "mid-career" or experienced portfolio managers. "We hire almost exclusively fresh out of school," he explained. There's a big intern class. This year's interns come from the likes of Nanyang Technological University, the London School of Economics and Yale.

While rival funds have a reputation for churning through humans, Zainul-Abidin said Quantedge hires people for the long term. The fund feels an obligation to "take care of this individual, to give them a job, a career that could last a lifetime," he declared. Quantedge wants its young employees to "grow individually" and "to be happy, to be taken care of." It wants them to "live a good life, build a family and so on."  Hiring someone is a "huge responsibility," says Zainul-Abidin.

This all sounds very unlike big multistrategy hedge funds, which often hire experienced portfolio managers from rivals for huge sums of money and let them go when risk limits are exceeded. But Quantedge is clearly doing something right. Not only has it returned 34.6% this year, but it's also returned nearly 20% on average every year since inception. The intention has been to create a compounding engine, says Zainul-Abidin.

Quantedge's successful strategy is to "operate one of the most diversified investment portfolios in the world." It trades 300 distinct markets and 50 different commodity types and it researches each of them. In these areas it takes a higher than usual level of risk. "When you have a, "diversified portfolio your idiosyncratic risk goes down tremendously," explains Zainul-Abidin. More risk can therefore be taken in each individual investment.

This works for Quantedge. It also works for the 22-year-olds it likes to hire. After they've worked there for a while they get to invest in Quantedge's fund and to enjoy some compounding of their own, although only 10% of their money can be withdrawn each year. 

If you're a 22-year-old looking for a benevolent protector, this all sounds very wonderful. Although it's a quant fund, Quantedge doesn't only hire mathematicians. Zainul-Abidin himself has a legal background. "You can be in any field," he says. "You can be an engineer. You can be a computer scientist." It's about being able to think logically and systematically.

Zainul-Abidin says Quantedge is not into "being maniacally meritocratic." Nor is it into dumping its people after a loss. "Just because you're not profitable for one, two years doesn't mean that it [your strategy] can't be the part of the portfolio that saves it [the fund] in two or three years' time," he declares. 

If this sounds appealing, Quantedge is also into hiring smart polymaths who want to 'get on board' with its mission and who will think collectively. Quantedge's mission is to make its mostly private investors and employees very rich. Thinking collectively means understanding the big Quantedge picture and not being too hung up on your own personal performance.

If you're still not convinced, Quantedge also has a Formula One simulator in an office. It has offices in Singapore and New York. In salary terms it pays well, but maybe not the best. Mostly it is about being nice, and making you rich in the long term. "If you're having any trouble elsewhere, let us know. We'll try to help you because you're now part of the Quantedge family," says Zainul-Abidin of his ethos towards his young employees. 

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