I'll throw Kullamagi's name into the discussion. I cant think of anyone who capitalized more or better on the market's bull run from 2009 thru 2021. Using mostly a breakout swing trading system he grew his trading account(s) from 10k to 100mm in that timespan. And did it all from his mom's basement! I personally think he quadrupled his bankroll during the covid bouncback and meme stock craze of 2020 and 2021.
He uses different spellings too: https://qullamaggie.com/about/ Poor guy is Swedish, so probably taxed like hell.
Oh no doubt the Swedish govt is gonna try to take their cut of his good fortune. But then again so would any other country,some less,some maybe more.
It is easy to compare hedge fund performance. Individuals, trading own account, is harder as you don't have access to their complete trading performance. Mostly they made big return for a few years only. The GOAT would be some individual who made at least $1 Billion (inflation adjusted if needed) every year for 10 years straight. Where the 10 years included both bull and bear markets. Not sure if such an individual exists.
Yeah I'm gonna say such an individual doesn't exist. 1 billion per year for 10 years straight? An individual trader? That would be a Unicorn.
Paul Tudor Jones and George Soros have to be in contention due to their individual performance in 87 and 92 and the fact they run such successful Funds. O'Neil and Minervini have such great abilities. Minervini won the U.S. Investing Championship in 97 and 2021 and was well ahead in 96 before SEC shut it down. Minervini has also trained a lot of other U.S. Investing Championship winners or place getters. O'Neil was great in his own right and also had great proteges like David Ryan, Chris Katcher and Cil Morales. Livermore was great until he lost it all unfortunately.
One other way to decide would be which individual trader took the most $$$$ out of the market in their life time. Raw dollars. Again impossible to say as data is private. For hedge funds, i think Rentec Medallion has taken over $100 Billion in raw profits. Has any hedge fund made more?
I think the greatest trader based on % or absolute should be in Forex trading, where the most liquidity is worldwide. You cannot do that much PnL in stocks or futures trading than in Forex trading. So the asset class to look at is Forex trading (with 'only' about 50 years of history here).