While hedge fund performance at any given time is notoriously difficult to determine, with even the 13-f filings offering only limited insights, several such investment vehicles emerged in the first quarter (Q1) of 2025 as likely to have outperformed the turbulent market.
AQR Capital Management has been especially noted by press time on April 2 as operating several funds with returns close to 10% despite the wider equity markets suffering a substantial plunge during the three-month period.
The firm’s Delphi Long-Short Equity Strategy – a fund that, as the name implies, combines long and short positions while maintaining moderate exposure – was especially noted as it achieved 9.7% returns in Q1, per an April 1 CNBC report.
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Interestingly, the fund’s profile on AQR’s website logs the year-to-date (YTD) performance as 8.74%, either indicating a sharp one-day drop by press time on April 2 or a data mismatch.
Earlier reports paint the EDL Capital hedge fund as another possible big winner of Q1 as its 2025 returns were, by March 11, reported as reaching an impressive 17%. The fund’s strategy involves tracking the global macroeconomic outlooks and trading currencies and bonds accordingly.
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Elsewhere, the same information has led to hedge funds losing much of their popularity – the data-backed allegations that the vast majority of active managers underperform the market or relevant indices – appear in play in 2025.
Many such investment vehicles, for example, shed approximately 50% of the gains they accrued by March 7 as the U.S. tech sector spearheaded a massive sell-off, according to a Reuters report from the same day.
Such events could be particularly damaging for investors due to the hedge funds’ famously voracious common fee structure, which involves taking 2% of the total assets under management (AUM) annually and 20% of the profits.
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