YWR: Hedge Fund Holdings Analysis
Today is a good day to analyze over 320 hedge funds with $2.6 trillion in publicly disclosed equity positions.
We do this to generate ideas for ourselves.
We look for themes, ideas, crowded positioning or lack of positioning.
Performance
Despite getting whipsawed in May, the HF industry is +2.48% ytd. Not bad. Macro is doing well. So are Event and Long-biased Equity.
We hate it, but the Multi-Strats are doing well too.
Over the last 1, 3, 5, or 10 years Multi-Strat is the best performing strategy. Have they built a better mousetrap? The numbers suggest this is the case.
Top 21 Equity Positions
The top 5 positions by number of holders looks the same as before (Amazon, MSFT, Meta, Nvidia, Alphabet). Lots of big tech, but there have been subtle shifts.
The number of funds holding Nvidia is growing, but it’s still not the favorite. Funds are less comfortable owning ‘hard tech’.
Apple is falling out of favour. The number of funds owning Apple has slipped from 41 last year to 34.
Salesforce is out of the Top 21
Alphabet is also falling out of favour. Across both share classes the holder count is 85, down from 107 last year. Like with Baidu, the concern is what AI does to paid search.
TSMC is on the verge of becoming a Top 5 holding.
Banks are more popular than previously (Capital One, BofA in top 21)
Shooting war in the Gulf and no oil stocks in the Top 21.
Still no European Banks. Actually, no European stocks at all.
No China. No South Korea. No luxury.
Goldmans’ Prime Services data shows hedge funds own the Mag7 names, but the net long position continues to decline. Which is great news, because YWR just bought AMZN, NVDA and META (10 Nvidia Takeaways)
Hedge Fund Gold Holdings Analysis
Can you name the sector with the highest estimate and price momentum in the world which the hedge fund industry has no interest in owning?
Gold.
I can’t guarantee I haven’t missed some gold related names, but it looks like the total number of Top 20 gold holdings across 322 funds is … 35. Basically, 0.
For example, only 3 funds own GLD in their Top 20. One fund owns Barrick and 4 own Newmont.
This analysis tends to suggest Jeremy might be right. Gold is going >$5,000 and everyone is afraid to own it.
If you want gold mining exposure you have to do it yourself.
The funds won’t own it. Or not enough to matter.
Fund of the Month: Maple Rock Capital Partners
Each month we use the YWR Top 20 Hedge Fund holdings dataset (link below) to deep dive on funds with interesting positioning.
This month we highlight the great Xavier Majic and Maple Rock.
Xavier seems to have made a bet on storage names (Western Digital and Seagate) and how AI is a boost for storage. This is something we noted about $NTAP from the Nvidia Top takeaways.
The Western Digital turnaround could be interesting. Here is a link to the presentation.
Maple Rock also owns several Cash Dragons (Alibabab, PDD, Baidu, JD.com).
Coal (Warrior Met). We own Glencore (YWR Portfolios).
A gold stock. Equinox.
Sunrun..interesting. Untouchable #8 (renewables)
Summary
Overall, everything looks good. Hedge funds still have no exposure to our top themes (European Banks, Gold, China). Also, a much reduced exposure to our new interest (big cap tech).
Below is a link to the full data set so you can check out the top 20 disclosed equity positions for over 1,000 funds as of June 16, 2025.