Authored by: Stephen Mancini

2025 Outlook: Public Equities

We expect developed markets value and small-cap equities to outperform, given our economic views and their steep valuation discounts. Regionally, we believe US equity performance will not match the level set in 2024, allowing European, Japanese, and emerging markets equities to perform more in line with broader developed markets. Within emerging markets, strong Indian equity gains should moderate, while we doubt Chinese equities will collapse. At the same time, we expect long/short equity strategies will perform better than typical.

2023 Outlook: Hedge Funds

We expect macro hedge funds to perform well, given our expectations that market volatilities will remain elevated and our view that inflation risks are skewed to exceeding expectations. We expect long/short managers will benefit from positive short rebates.

Hedge Fund Update: First Quarter 2022

Continuing the trend seen in second half 2021, global equity markets remained volatile during first quarter 2022, as global indexes declined. Despite the market drawdown, broader indexes mask the relative performance among index constituents. Underlying volatility across sectors was more pronounced. As a result, within long/short equity hedge fund strategies, manager returns had wide dispersion driven primarily by net exposure to growth names and recent IPOs within the technology, healthcare, and consumer sectors.