4Q 24 Hedge Fund Strategy Performance, Gross of Fees
- Industry Return: 0.9%
- Best Performing Fund Style: Event Driven 2.8%
- Worst Performing Fund Style: Emerging Markets -2.1%
Summary Commentary
Hedge Fund performance in 4Q24 was modestly positive with many Event Driven and Global Macro managers benefitting from positioning favoring Trump’s election in November while Emerging Market managers saw declines particularly as the hoped-for Chinese stimulus failed to materialize.
Heading into ’25, fund managers continue to appear cautious, with little indication of a desire to either chase the broad-based rapid runup in assets that happened in ‘24 or bet on weakening assets. Stock positioning is just slightly above long-term averages. Corporate credit exposure has been cut back to neutral as spreads have compressed further. And bond and gold positioning look to be roughly in line with long-term averages. Only small pockets of strong views appear to remain across the industry, including select long-USD positions and short energy commodities.
With low conviction across major asset class exposures, most Hedge Fund managers appear to be in wait-and-see mode coming into ‘25, patiently holding firepower until market and economic dynamics ahead become clearer.
Returns are depicted gross of fees. The lightened sections show the impact of inferred fees. See methodology at the end of this presentation for more details.
You can read the full report (pages 1 – 11) with additional context and market commentary here.