The traders who make the biggest calls often end up as public figures, writing books, speaking at conferences, and narrating the markets in real time. But at Brevan Howard, one of the world’s biggest macro hedge funds, one of the firm’s most profitable managers has built his reputation almost entirely out of sight.
Minal Bathwal, an Indian origin Singapore-based trader, has made billions of dollars for the firm, but has not had a single losing year since he began managing money during the 2008 financial crisis, Bloomberg reported.
A rare kind of consistency in macro
Global macro investing is having a moment again. Volatility has returned to rates, currencies and commodities, drawing investors back to a strategy that thrives on big swings. A BNP Paribas survey cited by Bloomberg found that investors expect discretionary macro to be among the top-performing hedge fund strategies this year, even as many complain there are too few managers with long, single-lead track records.
Bathwal is one of the exceptions. Bloomberg reported that his team has delivered an annualised return of 12.7% between 2008 and the end of 2025, with a Sharpe ratio of 1.7. By comparison, discretionary macro hedge funds have posted a Sharpe ratio of 1.4 since 2008, based on PivotalPath data cited in the report.
The fund he runs now manages about $5.5 billion, Bloomberg said, and has made money from calls across Asian markets, including bets on Korean interest rates and swings in regional currencies.
Financialexpress.com could not independently verify the news. We have reached out to the company, and this story will be updated as and when we get a response.
The man with seven LinkedIn connections
In another era, this kind of performance would come with a public platform: a book deal, conference stages, perhaps even a cult following. Instead, Bathwal has opted out, apparently.
Bloomberg described him as intensely private, avoiding public appearances and maintaining just seven LinkedIn connections. The report said he is so low-profile that a former colleague joked he wouldn’t recognise him on the street.
His first real trade was in the middle of a crisis
Bathwal joined Brevan Howard’s Hong Kong office in 2007 as a junior trader. A year later, as markets convulsed through the subprime crisis, he got his first chance to manage money, Bloomberg reported.
At the time, he had little direct investing experience. What he did have was technical skill: he had previously worked as a structurer at UBS, building and pricing derivatives. Bloomberg said that background gave him a deep understanding of how to construct complex trades with asymmetric payoffs.
His early wins included a run of bets over roughly two years on both the direction and volatility of South Korean rates. The Bank of Korea began record rate cuts in 2008 as it tried to cushion the crisis. Bloomberg reported that Bathwal’s trades drew attention quickly, leading his bosses to allocate more capital to him within months.
He finished 2008 up 21.81% over six months of trading, Bloomberg said.
The long game: Asia macro, without the drama
By late 2010, Bathwal moved to trading for Brevan Howard’s Asia fund and eventually became its co-chief investment officer in 2016, according to Bloomberg. In May 2018, he launched his own fund, which later became a bellwether inside the firm.
His career has been punctuated by years when he caught major macro shifts. Bloomberg reported that he returned 29.49% in 2013 during the era of Abenomics and the “taper tantrum”, and gained 20.9% in 2015 as the dollar strengthened and Asian currencies moved sharply, including after the yuan devaluation. During the market turmoil of March 2020, his fund gained 5.46%, the report said.
Even in years where his returns were more muted, Bloomberg said he made around 6.8% last year, trailing rivals who delivered double-digit gains; his consistency has remained his calling card.
“Be passionate, not emotional”
Those who have worked with Bathwal told Bloomberg that his temperament is central to his edge. The report described him as philosophical, disciplined and willing to resize positions without emotion when markets move against him, while avoiding the trap of over-trading.
Bloomberg also cited an interview Bathwal gave to Brevan Howard’s internal website, where he said his lack of prior trading experience turned out to be “immensely helpful”. “Having a blank canvas helped me shape my style and evolve,” he said, according to Bloomberg.
In the same interview, he offered a line that reads like a personal trading rule: the first true test of being a good trader is that your spouse or partner should not be able to tell whether you had a good day or a bad day when you come home. “Be passionate about work, not emotional,” he said, Bloomberg reported.
A team, but still a single mind at the centre
Bloomberg reported that Bathwal now runs a 14-person investment team, including 10 traders. Within that group are six junior portfolio managers who trade their own books: Manu Kapoor, Ankit Soni, Abhishek Pal, Rishi Singh, Swapnil Kalbande and Stephen Wang. Even so, Bloomberg said Bathwal still manages the majority of the capital himself.
Much of the money in the strategy comes from other Brevan Howard funds, with another chunk representing retained profits. Bloomberg reported that the strategy has only opened a handful of times since it began trading, allowing a small number of external investors to join, sometimes after waiting years.
Brevan Howard’s biggest quiet star
Bathwal’s run has also made him historically important inside Brevan Howard. Bloomberg cited court filings showing he ranks among the five biggest profit generators in the firm’s history, behind only figures such as co-founder Alan Howard and Chris Rokos, who left after bringing in around $4 billion to start his own firm.
Bathwal’s rise also coincided with structural change at Brevan Howard. Bloomberg reported that by early April 2021, his MB Macro Fund had reached $1.85 billion, making it the largest standalone vehicle among a group of four traders receiving allocations from the firm’s Master Fund.
The firm has since returned money from a fund run by another manager from the same cohort, leaving Bathwal as the last remaining of a 2017–2018 crop of standalone vehicles created for star traders, Bloomberg said.
A macro career built for the new hedge fund era
Bloomberg framed Bathwal’s approach as well-suited to how hedge funds have evolved over the past decade. Instead of relying on a few massive, high-conviction bets, the style once associated with macro giants, the industry has shifted toward “pod shops” such as Millennium and Balyasny, where risk is tightly controlled, and capital is constantly reallocated across teams.
Bathwal’s method of stacking multiple trades around themes and focusing on option-like payoffs fits this environment, Bloomberg said. He is known for careful instrument selection, hedging and sequencing trade legs, a style learned in the Brevan Howard tradition under Kaspar Ernst, who hired him when running the firm’s Asia business in 2007, according to the report.
Still not a household name
For all his performance and internal stature, Bathwal remains outside the celebrity ecosystem of hedge fund management. Bathwal stands as a contrast to high-profile investors like Ray Dalio, Bill Ackman and Cliff Asness, the report added.
Instead, his story has unfolded in the most Brevan Howard way possible: inside the firm, inside the trades, and inside the numbers. While people rush to social media in an attempt to showcase the money they have made, Bathwal just happens to be the rare one who has done it without trying to be seen.
Editorial Note: This is an independent profile. Brevan Howard Asset Management and its representatives were contacted but did not respond prior to the time of publication. In the absence of direct comment, this article was reported using publicly available records and regulatory filings, where applicable. This content is not sponsored and was produced in accordance with FinancialExpress.com’s editorial guidelines.