The RBC Hedge Fund Handbook – No Shelter from the Storm, Yet

In this week’s podcast, we run through our takeaways from the first quarter 13fs of more than 300 of the biggest US-based hedge funds, which came out last week. Three big things you need to know: First, our review of the performance trends and relative valuations of the most popular S&P 500 stocks in hedge funds suggests to us that the pandemic froth is out of these names, an important milestone, but on the valuation side there may still be some room to fall. Second, we are keeping a close eye on the performance trends of the most popular hedge fund stocks relative to the broader market as another gauge of institutional investor sentiment. Third, in terms of sector positioning, what jumps out to us the most is that while hedge fund positioning in Consumer Staples remained underweight relative to the Russell 3000 as 1Q22 came to an end, the underweight has narrowed and is back to its 3Q16 high, which we view as another cautious data point on the sector.