Can't say Buffett, he's really a long Investor, buy n holder almost. People like Paul Tudor Jones and George Soros are famous for one trade I guess, but run large Funds Dalio, Minervini, O'Neil, Livermore, Dennis? Who?
You tell me the exact definition (biggest % win, biggest absolute win, fastest win, most consistent winning record, etc.) and I tell you the name. Each category has a different answer. You can't ask a question like this without a definition.
Who has biggest % win? Who has biggest absolute win? Who has fastest win? Who has most consistent winning record?
Also we could make the distinction between traders trading their own money and HF managers. In the HF category Paulson's housing short made 5 billion. Soros' betting against the pound made 1 billion much quicker back when a billion was still a billion. Soros is also very consistent. I will let others chime in, but the fastest and biggest % short term return goes to some redditors (there were a few) who ran up a 30K account to 8MM. (less than a year) That is as good as it gets, if not the greatest. Specially the one who didn't use options.
One must work at a large broker to get more insight data, who is a very good trader among traders managing their own money only. On Fundseeder there was a trader with Sharpe 9 live traded over several years. So how do you get the information about the profitability trading only with own money ? I mean except with access to some broker data, I cannot imagine that. Not everyone wants to be public and tell everyone how successful (s)he was. That can only be speculation then. I also would strongly say people who need a Hedge Fund or any third party money are not the best traders, because those do not need any other money.?
From my past experience I know from a broker that he had a customer trading futures and turning 50k to 2000k into 3 months but then lost it all. I also met a prop trader who had a year trading futures with a Reward-Risk-Ratio of 70:1 in 1 year. So he risked only a few thousand to make a few hundred thousand here.
Except HFs are where the real money is. You get good money in fees in a down year. Try that with your own money.
This guy is up 10 times since July: www.reddit.com/r/TheRaceTo10Million/comments/y38wel/postcpi_update_258m/