Paul Tudor Jones

Tudor Jones historically has supported both Republican and Democratic politicians, and has voiced support for both President Donald Trump and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D). He financially supported President Barack Obama, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R), and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) in their presidential campaigns. ^{2 3 4 5 6}

Tudor Jones is considered media-shy but has gained more public exposure due to his charity work since the 2010s. ⁷ He has faced increased scrutiny due to his former friendship with film producer and convicted sexual predator Harvey Weinstein. ⁸

As of April 2026, Paul Tudor Jones’s net worth was estimated at $8.1 billion. ⁹

Career

After graduating from the University of Virginia, Paul Tudor Jones began his career as a cotton commodity trader. In 1980, at age 26, he founded the Tudor Investment Company, a hedge fund focused on macro trading, particularly based on national currency and interest rate fluctuations. ⁷ On Black Monday in 1988, Tudor Jones made an estimated $100 million when the Dow Jones Industrial Average crashed 22 percent. ¹⁰ Two years later, his fund earned an 87.4 percent return by betting against the Japanese stock market. In 2001 to 2002, the fund gained over 48 percent on technology stocks. After the early 2000s, Tudor Jones’s returns slowed, likely due to a more conservative investing approach. ¹¹

Tudor Jones’s fund is known for charging high fees. In 2010, Forbes reported that the fund charged 4 percent (compared to an industry average of 2 percent) and collected 23 percent of profits earned for investors. ¹²

From 1992 to 1995, Tudor Jones was chairman of the New York Cotton Stock Exchange. ¹³

As of 2026, Paul Tudor Jones was a board member of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. He was previously a board member of the Futures Industry Association (FIA) and was inducted into its “Hall of Fame” in 2005. ^{14  15}

Tudor Investment PAC

In the 2008 investment cycle, Paul Tudor Jones launched the Tudor Investment PAC, which raised $155,000 that was dispersed over the following eight years. Funding was provided by Paul, his wife, Sonia Jones, and employees of the Tudor Investment Company. Expenditures were roughly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. ¹⁶

Philanthropy

Paul Tudor Jones has dedicated significant energy and funds to his philanthropic pursuits which he says are informed by his Christian beliefs. In 2013, Tudor Jones said, “the only reason I’m working right now is so I can continue my philanthropy.” ¹⁷

I Have a Dream Foundation

In 1986, Tudor Jones partnered with the I Have a Dream Foundation to sponsor college scholarships for then-6th-grade students in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, which at the time was considered one of the poorest areas of New York City. Tudor Jones hoped the sponsorship would incentivize a high-school graduation rate of 90 percent, but the result was 33 percent. Tudor Jones admitted he “vastly underestimated both the academic and social challenges facing these kids.” ⁷

Robin Hood Foundation

In 1988, Tudor Jones founded the Robin Hood Foundation, a charity dedicated to fighting poverty in New York City through “venture philanthropy.” The Foundation is run almost entirely by hedge fund managers and drops 10 percent of grantees each year who underperform. By 2013, the organization had disbursed $1.5 billion. ⁷

In the early 2010s, Robin Hood launched a campaign to improve public education through a structural implementation of best practices. Tudor Jones identified teachers’ unions as the primary hindrance to public schools: “They have failed. They get an ‘F.’ What we have now is a failure in the way the teaching corps is organized, administered and deployed.” Jones also donated $125,000 to a union-led effort to increase taxes for school funding in Colorado. ⁷

As of 2026, Jones continued to sit on the board of Robin Hood. ¹⁸

Everglades Foundation

In 1993, Tudor Jones co-founded the Everglades Foundation, an environmental-conservation group dedicated to protecting Everglades National Park in Florida. ¹⁹

In 2008, Tudor Jones worked with the Everglades Foundation to intervene in the construction of a reservoir in the Everglades. The reservoir, which aimed to support local agriculture, would have been the largest in the world of its kind. When the construction was successfully stopped, the Florida government had already spent $300 million on the project. ²⁰

Excellence Boys Charter School

In 2004, Tudor Jones founded Excellence Boys Charter School, the first all-boys charter school in the United States. ²¹

JUST Capital

In 2014, Tudor Jones co-founded JUST Capital, a nonprofit organization that ranks large American companies based on how they treat workers, the environment, and the broader public. ²² Tudor Jones launched the initiative in response to concerns about widening income inequality, warning that the gap between corporate profits and worker compensation had led to a social divide not seen since the 1960s and 1970s. ²³ He has argued that left unaddressed, such inequality gaps “get closed in one of three ways: by revolution, higher taxes or wars.”  ²⁴  In a 2015 TED talk, Tudor Jones announced that JUST Capital would conduct annual national surveys to determine the priorities Americans most valued in corporate behavior (which reportedly included employee pay, fair hiring, and environmental impact) and would publish company rankings accordingly. ^{24  23}

The organization also launched a for-profit exchange-traded fund (ETF) tied to the performance of its annual “JUST 100” index of the highest-ranked companies. ²⁵

University of Virginia

Jones and his wife have contributed substantial funds to his alma mater, the University of Virginia (UVA). Their gifts have included a $35 million donation to build a basketball arena named after his father John Paul “Jack” Jones, a transportation attorney who also attended UVA, as well as a $12 million donation for the school’s “Contemplative Sciences Center.” ²⁶

In June 2012, Tudor Jones was involved in the brief ouster of UVA president Teresa A. Sullivan, supporting the effort by the board of visitors to remove her over disagreements about the pace of strategic change at the institution. The board voted unanimously to reinstate Sullivan just days later, and the incident drew criticism of Jones and other outside figures who had influenced the decision. ²⁷

Political Activities

Advocacy

In March 2020, Paul Tudor Jones was on a call with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence regarding the potential impact of COVID-19 on the economy. ²⁸ In May, Tudor Jones warned that the American economy was heading for a “second depression” due to an inadequate response from the government to the COVID-19 pandemic. He blamed an American affinity for “freedom” for having the potential to prevent necessary measures and contrasted it with a greater success in combatting the pandemic among Asian countries which he said emphasize collective over individual values. Tudor Jones also noted that the American love of freedom is normally “America’s biggest strength.” ²⁹

In 2019, Tudor Jones declared then-President Trump “the greatest salesman in the history of this country.” He considered the combination of government stimulus spending and low interest rates “the most conducive environment for economic growth and strength that I’ve ever seen,” and he commended Republican support for heavy deficit spending, though he noted concerns about rising inequality. ³⁰

Also in 2019, Tudor Jones predicted that if U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) won the presidential election and she implemented her proposed wealth tax, the S&P 500 would decrease 25 percent and economic growth would be cut in half. ³¹

Tudor Jones expressed support for Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s (D-South Bend)’s presidential campaign. ³²

Tudor Jones served on the finance committee of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R). ³³  Tudor Jones later donated to Mayor Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign. ⁵

Campaign Contributions

Since 1989, Tudor Jones has given $1,454,900 in federally reported contributions to political candidates and PACs. Tudor Jones’s donations have roughly split between Republicans and Democrats. ⁶

In 2007, Tudor Jones hosted a 500-person fundraiser for then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama’s (D-IL) presidential campaign. ⁴

Tudor Jones’s largest recipient is Honor Pennsylvania, which received $500,000. ⁶ Honor Pennsylvania was established in the 2022 cycle, and it raised over $21 million ³⁴ to support U.S. Senate candidate David McCormick (R-PA), who lost in the Republican primaries. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has also donated to Honor Pennsylvania. ³⁵

Another major beneficiary of Tudor Jones was Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting the presidential candidacy of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) in 2012. Tudor Jones contributed $200,000.⁶

In the 2024 election cycle, Jones gave $600,000 to Keystone Renewal PAC, a super PAC dedicated to helping Republican candidates win elections in Pennsylvania. He also spent $13,200 on Tim Sheehy’s (R-MT) U.S. Senate campaign, which was successful. ³⁶

In 2025, Jones gave $7,000 to a PAC supporting U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and another $5,000 to the Democrats Win Seats, a PAC supporting Democratic candidates. ³⁶

Everglades Foundation and Ron DeSantis

Tudor Jones has emerged as one of many wealthy supporters of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL). In 2022, Captains for Clean Water (CFCW), an environmentalist PAC, gave $250,000 to the re-election campaign of Governor DeSantis, who subsequently came out against Senate Bill 2508, which jeopardized funds set aside for Everglades restoration. According to the blog Florida Politics, Captains for Clean Water has links to the Everglades Foundation, an organization Tudor Jones founded and on which he maintains a board seat. ³⁷ Governor DeSantis vetoed the bill in June. ³⁸ Thomas van Lent, who worked at the Everglades Foundation for 18 years, left the organization in 2021 because he believed it had “lost its way” and sworn “fealty” to Governor DeSantis. ³⁹ CFCW received $338,000 from the Everglades Foundation between 2016 and 2023. ⁴⁰

Furthermore, in 2022, the Florida Senate Appropriations Committee questioned CFCW about its ties to the Everglades Foundation after CFCW protested SB 2508 before the committee. While CFCW co-founder Dan Andrews reportedly attempted to distance himself from the Everglades Foundation, an investigative news outlet claimed there were many parallels between CFCW’s rhetoric and messaging from Everglades, while the Fort Myers News-Press noted there were financial ties between Everglades and the Florida chapters of the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club. Additionally, an Instagram post revealed a meeting between CFCW members and the CEO of the Everglades Foundation, Eric Eikenberg. ^{41  42}

Controversies

Remarks about Women in Business

In 2013, a recording of a meeting at the University of Virginia showed Paul Tudor Jones saying that women are unable to adequately focus on high-intensity trading after having children: “As soon as that baby’s lips touch that girl’s bosom, forget it.” Tudor Jones apologized for his remarks. ⁴³

Home Protest

In 2015, Tudor Jones’ home was protested by “Hedge Clippers,” a campaign organized by the left-wing Strong Economy for All Coalition against wealthy individuals perceived to have too much political influence. Institutional Investor called Tudor Jones “not the most obvious target” given his relative lack of involvement in politics and his poverty-focused philanthropy. ⁴⁴

Relationship with Harvey Weinstein

Tudor Jones was a friend of film producer Harvey Weinstein and sat on the board of the Weinstein Group. In 2017, Weinstein was accused by over 100 women of sexual harassment and assault. In December 2017, it was revealed that Tudor Jones had written a letter to Weinstein a few months earlier expressing support and the belief that “this will go away sooner than you think and it will be forgotten.” After the revelation, Tudor Jones publicly denounced Weinstein. ⁸

In response to Tudor Jones’s letter, United Way’s Women United initiative launched a petition demanding that the Everglades Foundation remove him from its board. ⁴⁵

Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

In 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported on a collection of documents it received detailing the connections between convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and several Wall Street banks and investment firms. According to the report, in the years leading up to Epstein’s death in 2019, long after he was indicted in 2006 for solicitation of prostitution following allegations that he paid a 14-year-old for massages, Epstein allegedly received $13.5 million from a hedge fund managed by Paul Tudor Jones. ^{46  47}