Background and career
Michael H. Steinhardt (born December 7, 1940) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist. In 1967, he founded a hedge fund, Steinhardt Partners, which he ran until he closed it in 1995. After a hiatus from work, he returned to head WisdomTree Investments in 2004. In January 2014, he was on the cover of Forbes Magazine, referred to as "Wall Street's greatest trader". Forbes reported his net worth at $1.1 billion as of October 2018.
Steinhardt earned a bachelor's degree at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1960. He started his career working for the mutual fund Calvin Bullock and the brokerage firm Loeb, Rhoades & Co. (the precursor to Shearson Loeb Rhoades). Steinhardt's father, Sol Frank "Red" Steinhardt, was the fence of the Genovese Crime Family, which also included Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Frank Costello, Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky (“Hyman Roth” in Godfather II), and Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo. Michael Steinhardt's father was his first investment client, giving his son envelopes stuffed with cash to put in the stock market giving him seed money to begin his investment career.
Working as an analyst at Loeb, Rhoades & Co., Steinhardt followed the conglomerate industry, which included companies such as Automatic Sprinkler (now defunct), City Investing (also defunct), and the best-known conglomerate of its day, Gulf+Western (now part of Viacom and Viacom's spinoff CBS).
In 1967, using earnings from his investments, Steinhardt founded the hedge fund Steinhardt, Fine, and Berkowitz (later Steinhardt Partners) with co-investors William Salomon, former managing partner of Salomon Brothers and Jack Nash, founder of Odyssey Partners. Between 1967 and 1995, Steinhardt Partners averaged an annualized return for its clients of 24.5%, after a 1% management fee and a "performance fee" of 15% (early in his career, later 20%) of all annual gains, realized and unrealized, nearly triple the annualized performance of the S&P 500 Index over the same timeframe. After decades of successfully managing the fund, Steinhardt and his firm were investigated for allegedly trying to manipulate the short-term Treasury Note market in the early 1990s. He personally paid 75% of a total fine of $70 million as part of settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice. His firm made $600 million on the Treasury positions. In his book, No Bull, Steinhardt said he did nothing wrong, but merely settled the case in order to "move on". His fund lost 1/3 of its value in the 1994 bond market crisis. In 1995, after finishing up 25%, decided to close his fund, stating, "I thought there must be something more virtuous, more ennobling to do with one's life than make rich people richer," before returning to work in 2004 to head WisdomTree Investments, a fund with nearly US$64 billion in assets under management. The hedge fund distributed all monies to its limited partners at the end of 1995.
In 2004, Steinhardt came out of retirement to work for Index Development Partners, Inc., now known as WisdomTree Investments. He is chairman of WisdomTree, which offers dividend and earnings-based index funds rather than traditional index funds based on market capitalization. As of July 2018, WisdomTree had $41.2 billion under management. During the fall of 2007 and 2008, WisdomTree's growth stagnated, as the stock market, especially the financial sector, in which WisdomTree's dividend-based funds are overweighted, tanked, as did WisdomTree's stock. However, as the WisdomTree funds tended to outperform their "bogies," asset growth resumed its earlier pace and its stock price appreciated accordingly.
Forbes Magazine reported Steinhardt's net worth at US$1.1 billion as of October 2018. The Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University bears his name in recognition of two $10 million donations. After 2018 sexual harassment allegations against Steinhardt, the student government at the school called for removal of the philanthropist’s name; a call which was renewed after his 2021 deal with the Manhattan District Attorney about Steinhardt's 180 stolen antiquities. In the 1990s, Steinhardt bought and donated Steeple Jason Island and Grand Jason Island in the Falkland Islands to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), along with US$425,000 for a research station to be named after himself and his wife. Steinhardt invested in baseball teams, owning part of the Miami Marlins and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Steinhardt is the past chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council and a board member of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, to which he donated $250,000 in 2002.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
