A large share of the world’s discretionary macro money is run from within a few square miles of central London, here is who runs it, and why the City rather than New York.

Key takeaways

• Global macro funds trade the direction of whole economies, interest rates, currencies, government bonds and commodities, rather than picking individual shares.
• London is the base for several of the largest macro managers, including Brevan Howard, Rokos, Caxton and Capula, alongside the listed systematic house Man Group.
• The City’s pull is structural: it sits between the Asian and American trading days and handles the single largest share of global currency turnover.
• These strategies lean on leverage and derivatives, so the funds are open almost entirely to professional and institutional investors, and drawdowns can be steep.

Ask most people to name a hedge fund capital and they say New York. For a lot of strategies that is right. For global macro, the business of betting on where economies, currencies and central banks are heading, the centre of gravity sits in London. Several of the managers that move the most money in rates and foreign exchange run their books from Mayfair, St James’s and the City, not from Manhattan.

That concentration is not an accident of history. It reflects where currency and bond liquidity actually trades, which trading hours cover the most of the global day, and how the UK chooses to regulate the people running the money. Which firms matter, what each one actually trades, and why London holds the position it does are worth taking in turn, and the hedge funds guide covers the strategy in full.

What global macro actually trades

Global macro is a top-down strategy. Instead of researching a single company’s earnings, a macro manager forms a view on something much larger, that a central bank will cut rates faster than the market expects, that a currency is overvalued, that a country’s bonds will sell off. The fund then expresses that view across liquid markets: interest-rate futures, government bonds, foreign exchange, and sometimes commodities and equity indices.

There are two broad camps. Discretionary macro runs on human judgement, a portfolio manager reads the data, the politics and the price action, then places the trade. Systematic macro hands the same job to models, which scan hundreds of markets for signals such as price trends and act without a human on each decision. Both are represented in London, and the mechanics of how each works are covered in more detail in what are macro hedge funds and how the strategy works.

The common thread is leverage. Because a currency or a government bond moves in small percentages, macro funds borrow against their positions to make those moves meaningful, and they use derivatives to size bets precisely. The Financial Conduct Authority treats leveraged and complex instruments as high-risk products, and its retail data shows most private accounts lose money trading them. Inside a macro fund the same tools are handled by professional risk teams, but the point stands: this is a strategy that can lose a great deal, quickly, when a view is wrong.

The London macro hedge funds that matter

The list below is the real one, genuine global-macro and closely related rates and relative-value managers with London as their home or a principal hub. It is not a ranking of the biggest London hedge funds by assets, which would sweep in equity and credit shops that do something entirely different.

Brevan Howard is the name most associated with London macro. Founded in 2002, it takes its name from its founders, Blochet, Rokos and Alan Howard among them, and describes itself as a global macro platform now spanning rates and digital assets. Its assets have grown to roughly $35bn, and it runs more than 170 portfolio managers across offices that include London, New York, Geneva and Abu Dhabi. Alan Howard remains the majority owner, though he has since moved his own residency to Switzerland.

Rokos Capital Management is the highest-profile spin-out from that lineage. Chris Rokos, one of Brevan Howard’s original co-founders, launched it in 2015, and it has grown into one of the largest discretionary macro funds in Europe. It is currently returning capital to clients to cap assets at around $20bn, a deliberate choice to keep the book nimble enough to trade rates and currencies without moving markets against itself.

Caxton Associates carries one of the oldest names in macro. Founded in New York in 1983, it moved its headquarters to London in 2019, and now describes itself plainly as a global macro hedge fund active across all liquid asset classes, run under chairman and chief executive Andrew Law. Firm-wide assets are commonly estimated at around $15bn, though public regulatory filings capture only its US entity, so the exact group figure is not disclosed.

Capula Investment Management is macro-adjacent rather than pure directional macro. Founded in 2005 by Yan Huo, the Mayfair-based firm began in fixed-income relative value, trading the small pricing gaps between related interest-rate instruments, and has since added macro and “crisis alpha” strategies designed to profit when markets are stressed. Reported assets sit in the region of $30bn, making it one of Europe’s largest hedge fund managers.

Man Group is the listed reference point. It trades on the London Stock Exchange as a FTSE 250 constituent, which makes it the rare macro-adjacent manager whose numbers are public and audited. Its systematic arm, Man AHL, is one of the longest-running quantitative managers in the world and runs trend-following and other model-driven macro strategies. Group-wide funds under management are reported at around $228bn as at the end of 2025. How that systematic approach works is set out in what is a quant fund and how systematic investing works.

Kirkoswald rounds out the picture. Founded in 2018 by the Australian macro trader Greg Coffey, it runs a global macro book with an emerging-markets tilt of roughly $8bn. It is structured across both London and New York, but Coffey and the investment operation are London-based.

One name worth flagging by its absence is Eisler Capital. It started life in 2015 as a London global macro fund under former Goldman Sachs partner Edward Eisler, but it pivoted to a multi-strategy model and wound down through 2025 after heavy losses. It is a reminder that a London address and a strong pedigree guarantee nothing in this business.

Why London, not New York

The clearest reason is the trading clock. London’s business day opens as Asian markets are closing and stays live through the US morning. A macro desk in the City can trade the Tokyo session, the European open and the New York open from a single seat, which matters enormously for a strategy built on currencies and rates that trade around the world at once. New York catches the American day; London catches most of the global one.

Then there is the raw liquidity. London is the single largest centre for foreign exchange trading, handling 37.8% of global FX turnover in the April 2025 survey run by the Bank of England, more than any other jurisdiction including the United States. With global FX turnover averaging $9.6 trillion a day in that survey, being close to where currencies actually change hands is a genuine edge for a macro trader.

The talent pool compounds the effect. Decades of investment-bank rates and FX desks, plus the funds themselves, have built a deep bench of traders, quantitative researchers and risk staff who know these markets. A new macro fund launching in London can hire people who have traded gilts, bunds and sterling for years, and it plugs into the settlement, prime brokerage and market infrastructure clustered around the City and the London Stock Exchange. Money and expertise pool where they are already concentrated, and macro has concentrated in London.

The regulatory contrast with the US

How the UK regulates these managers is part of the draw. The FCA runs what it calls a principles-based regime, a set of high-level Principles for Businesses that firms must meet, rather than an exhaustive rulebook for every situation. UK hedge fund managers are authorised under the Financial Services and Markets Act and the Alternative Investment Fund Managers regime, and the FCA has folded individual accountability into that through the Senior Managers and Certification Regime, which since December 2019 has made named senior individuals personally responsible for conduct at the firm.

The US arrangement is more fragmented. A macro manager there typically registers with the Securities and Exchange Commission as an investment adviser and files a Form ADV, and because macro funds trade futures, it usually also registers with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the National Futures Association as a commodity pool operator or trading adviser. Oversight is split across two regulators with more prescriptive, rules-heavy requirements. Neither system is inherently softer, the UK’s individual-accountability model has real teeth, but a single principles-based regulator is administratively simpler for a firm whose whole business is trading global markets, and that simplicity is part of why macro has stayed in London.

None of this removes the underlying risk. These are leveraged, derivatives-heavy funds, restricted to professional and institutional investors for good reason. When a central bank surprises the market or a currency move reverses, the same leverage that magnifies gains magnifies losses just as fast, as Eisler’s closure and Brevan Howard’s own lean years both show.

FAQs

What is a macro hedge fund?

A fund that trades the direction of economies rather than individual companies, taking positions in interest rates, currencies, government bonds and commodities based on a view of where central banks and growth are heading. Some do it through human judgement, others through computer models.

Which is the biggest macro hedge fund in London?

By assets among the private discretionary managers, Brevan Howard is the largest at roughly $35bn, with Capula and Rokos also managing tens of billions. Man Group is far larger overall at around $228bn, but it is a listed, multi-strategy firm whose macro exposure runs mainly through its systematic AHL unit.

Can retail investors put money into these funds?

Directly, almost never, they are structured for professional and institutional clients and require large minimums. The main listed exception is Man Group itself, whose shares trade on the London Stock Exchange, giving ordinary investors exposure to the management business rather than to any single fund.

Why is London a hub for global macro rather than New York?

Its trading hours overlap both the Asian and American sessions, it handles the largest share of global currency turnover, it has a deep pool of rates and FX talent, and the FCA’s single principles-based regime is administratively simpler than the split US system.

Are macro hedge funds risky?

Yes. They use leverage and derivatives, and the FCA classes such instruments as high-risk. A wrong call on rates or currencies can produce large, fast losses, and even established firms have posted double-digit down years or closed entirely.

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