2016 Trading World Champion Rankings

Artur Teregulov posted a verified 914.8% return in the 2016 World Trading Championships futures division — the second-highest audited return in the competition's 33-year history, trailing only Larry Williams' legendary 11,376% in 1987. That number alone would justify the selection. But what makes Teregulov's achievement extraordinary is the context: he was the first Russian trader ever to win the World Trading Championship, competing against a global field from a base in Ufa, Russia, far from the established trading centers of Chicago, London, or New York.

The World Trading Championship, administered by Robbins Trading Company since 1984, requires real-money accounts with full third-party broker auditing through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Teregulov turned an initial $10,000 into approximately $101,500 over the competition year. In a year where most institutional hedge funds struggled to beat the S&P 500's 10% gain, and the average hedge fund returned just 5.5%, Teregulov produced nearly 100 times the industry average — with every trade verified and audited.

Teregulov traded futures contracts on the CME, employing a discretionary approach that combined technical analysis with macro event positioning. In a year bookended by the Brexit vote and the Trump election — both of which produced massive overnight moves in equity index and currency futures — the ability to navigate that volatility was the defining skill of 2016. His approach was collaborative; he credited his team with helping develop and refine trade ideas throughout the competition year.

The 914.8% figure places Teregulov in the all-time upper echelon of World Trading Championship performers. Very few traders in the competition's history have broken the 500% barrier, and only Williams has exceeded Teregulov's mark. Whether Teregulov would return to defend the title or build on the result through other ventures, the 2016 performance spoke for itself. In the most politically volatile trading year in a generation, the best audited result on the planet belonged to a futures trader from Russia who most of the trading world had never heard of. Full article »

Jason Mudrick's Distressed Opportunity Fund returned 38.7% in 2016, earning the top spot on Bloomberg's ranking of the 100 best-performing large hedge funds. Mudrick's edge was straightforward and well-timed: he loaded up on oil and gas debt in early 2016 when energy companies were trading at distressed levels, buying bonds at 30 cents on the dollar when the rest of the market was running for the exits. As oil rebounded from its February lows near $26 per barrel, those positions surged in value.

Mudrick founded his firm in 2009 with just $5 million in capital and built it to $1.3 billion in assets under management by 2016. His 38.7% return was more than seven times the hedge fund industry average and nearly four times the S&P 500's gain. In a year when marquee names like John Paulson lost 16% and the average event-driven fund struggled, Mudrick demonstrated that the biggest opportunities in distressed markets go to those willing to buy when nobody else will. The result cemented his reputation as one of the sharpest distressed debt investors of his generation.

Jim Simons topped Institutional Investor's Alpha Rich List for 2016 with $1.6 billion in personal earnings — one of only two individuals to earn more than a billion dollars from hedge fund management that year. Renaissance Technologies' institutional fund, RIEF, returned 21.5% net of fees, roughly double the S&P 500's gain and nearly four times the hedge fund industry average. The firm's other large fund, RIDA, gained 10.7%. The flagship Medallion fund, closed to outside investors since 1993, continued its decades-long streak of extraordinary returns.

Simons, a former NSA codebreaker and mathematics professor who founded Renaissance in 1982, had by 2016 built the most consistently profitable trading operation in financial history. The Medallion fund averaged approximately 66% gross annual returns over its lifetime. While most quantitative firms struggled with crowded factor trades in 2016, Renaissance's models — built on decades of proprietary signal research — continued to find edges that eluded the broader industry. In a year of political surprises that confounded most discretionary traders, the machines at Renaissance just kept compounding.

David Tepper earned approximately $700 million in 2016, ranking among the top five highest-earning hedge fund managers globally according to Institutional Investor's Alpha Rich List. Appaloosa Management, which Tepper founded in 1993 and relocated to Miami Beach in early 2016, has generated gross annualized returns of approximately 28% since inception — one of the strongest long-term track records in the industry. While Tepper's specific 2016 fund returns were not publicly disclosed in detail, his earnings figure and continued asset growth indicated a year well above the struggling hedge fund average.

Tepper is known for making concentrated macro bets during periods of maximum uncertainty, a style that was tailor-made for 2016. His career-defining trades have come during moments of crisis — most notably his massive long positions in bank stocks during the depths of the 2009 financial crisis, which returned over 130% that year. In 2016, as markets whipsawed through Brexit, the US election, and a volatile rate environment, Tepper's willingness to take directional conviction bets with large position sizes continued to distinguish him from peers who were content to hedge everything and earn nothing.

Paul Skarp returned to the World Trading Championships in 2016 as the defending futures division champion after winning the 2015 title with a 219.1% audited return. While he did not repeat as champion — that honor went to Artur Teregulov — Skarp remained a competitive force in the World Trading Championship field, finishing among the top performers in the futures division and demonstrating the kind of consistency that separates career competitors from one-time entrants.

Skarp's inclusion at #5 reflects both his 2016 competition presence and his broader significance within the World Trading Championship ecosystem. Very few traders win the futures title and then return to compete the following year against a field that now knows their approach. In the context of this rankings framework, which values audited, verified results over self-reported claims, Skarp's track record across multiple World Trading Championship campaigns represents the kind of sustained, verifiable excellence that matters. He would go on to win the World Trading Championship futures title again in 2025 with a 256% return, confirming a decade-long career at the top of competition trading.